Inua Ellams: performance poetry for all

Young writer Inua Ellams is bringing performance poetry to London's National Theatre with his show The 14th Tale, which tells of growing up in Nigeria and London

Inua Ellams, performance poet.

How did you come to write the play?

There's this parallel between writing and martial-arts films: typically the young upstart challenges the old master and does several backflips then the master just stands there, makes one move and the kid's on the floor. You have to do something similar with writing: control your tongue and just show off a couple of times. When I was 19 I tried to show off as much as possible – all the backflips – then this astonishing poet, Kwame Dawes, ripped to shreds one such poem and I didn't write for about six months. Then my father had a stroke and I began to think about the lineage of troublesome men in my family and my role as the only boy. It's really a coming-of-age story.

Does it feel like a real departure from your previous poems?

Before this, I'd written global poems and that was easy: you throw a pen and it bounces against something that's wrong with the world. It's more difficult to write about yourself and at the same time make it so that Joe Bloggs will be able to find something of himself in it.

What made you write for the stage?

I've been known to write densely beautiful things with extended metaphors that require you to pay attention, but I so often go to poetry readings where half the audience are drunk or more interested in sleeping with the person beside them and there's chitter chatter – I just got fed up of that and wanted to write something where people come expecting to be quiet for an hour.

Is there a growing enthusiasm for poetry in performance?

Yes, although part of me hopes the art form will never be that widespread, because as soon as something hits the mainstream it gets watered down.

But aren't you worried about hitting the mainstream by having a show on at the National?

[Laughs] That's a good question, but I'm not worried because I'm far too much of a troublemaker and far too stubborn to make other people happy. I'm terrible at lying, I can never hide my emotions, it's ridiculous. My duty is to the beautiful: as long as I create that then I'll be true.

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