Somewhere between page and stage

As a regular act on the performance poetry scene, I found myself naturally creating pieces that could work dramatically but never set out to do so. By the late 90’s, my poetical manifesto was, and still is, to break down the wall between literature and live act. As a poet, I place myself somewhere between page and stage. And what has always attracted me to Chaucer’s Tales is their celebration of both. The Tales are themselves masters of intertextuality – Chaucer was often rewriting existing texts – but there was always a dramatic imperative: they must entertain. In the Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and elsewhere in Chaucer, he presents friction between the authority of the written text (auctoritee) and the truths we acquire from life (experience). My character is born of literature and life. Wherever she goes she’s preceded by both her literary original and her doppelgangers, market women with gap-toothed smiles and a string of ex-lovers.

The Wife of Bafa comes from Nigeria, she speaks Nigerian English, she references Ibadon University and the exclusive Lagos district, Victoria Island; but the poem takes place in ‘This London’. As I lived in London for sixteen years it tends to feature regularly in my work. I didn’t have a particular London setting in mind (in contrast to Jean Binta Breeze’s dynamic The Wife of Bath speaks in Brixton Market).

London is the implied setting but in reality, the poem would be set wherever I got a gig! Alice Ebi Bafa has sold lace, linen and Dutch wax on several continents…