Performing Black British memory: Kat François's spoken-word show Raising Lazarus as embodied auto/biography

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Black British poets have been at the forefront of developing the "one-person poetry show" or spoken-word play, an apt format for negotiating diasporic history and cultural memory in a public arena. The focus of this article is Kat François's one-woman show Raising Lazarus (2009/2016), which stages the poet's own quest for information about her Grenadian relative Lazarus François, a World War I soldier. A media-specific analysis explores how François's text is semantically enriched when translated into a live performance. The authenticity effect typically produced in spoken-word poetry through the unity of author and performer is compounded in Raising Lazarus by textual and paratextual keys that frame François's show as embodied auto/biography. Merging life writing, monodrama, and spoken-word poetry, Raising Lazarus reveals the one-person show to be an effective and popular medium for Black British poets to articulate personal experience and negotiate collective identities through performance.

Keywords: Black British drama; Poetry performance; World War I; autobiography; cultural memory; life writing; spoken word.

Figure 1.

The National Front: verbal transcript indicating pitch movement.

Figure 2.

“Eyes … cold” from “I wish I’d known” (François , 1:31).

Figure 3.

The “black pig” incident: verbal transcript indicating pitch movement.

Figure 4.

“I wish I’d known”; verbal transcript indicating pitch movement and volume.

Figure 5.

François holding up Glenford Howe’s Race, War and Nationalism: A Social History of West Indians in the First World War (François , 13:33).

Figure 6.

Troop ship SS Verdala, 1915 (François , 18:03).

Figure 7.

François at Seaford cemetery: “Here They Lay” (François , 00:40).

Figure 8.

François at Seaford cemetery: “Here They Lay” (François , 00:40).