Wednesday 6th
May: 7.00pm at the Bluecoat, Liverpool
Dinesh Allirajah passed away in December 2014 aged 47. On May
6th (Dinesh’s birthday), the idea was (Vic's idea!) for writers, publishers and
academics, Levi Tafari,
Eleanor Rees, Ra Page, Bryan Biggs, Catherine Frances, Dave Ward, Adrian Challis and (deeply honoured) myself, to present an evening
to celebrate Dinesh’s writing achievements.
There was be a selection of recorded music reflecting Dinesh’s eclectic
taste and the event was presented by George
McKane of Yellow House. It happened (splendidly).
Dinesh’s stories
and poetry were published by Spike, Comma
and Peepal Tree. He toured widely to perform in France, Poland,
Germany, Bangladesh and Nigeria. He also taught at Liverpool John
Moores University,
University of Central
Lancashire and Edge
Hill University.
He was Writer in Residence at Liverpool Hope
University and also
worked extensively with Writing on the Wall and The Windows Project.
Dinesh was a believer in the liberating and educative
power of the arts. He was chair of the
National Association for Literature Development and Catalyst Dance and Drama; a
founding board member of Literature Northwest, chair of the trustees of the
National Black Arts Alliance and a director of Comma publishers.
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This was a great evening (I'm just back from it) and I said this as my humble contribution among many others (listed above):
I met Dinesh through my job
at Edge Hill University
where he worked as what is called an Associate Tutor, an ennobling term,
possibly a euphemism, for an hourly paid part time worker, of Creative Writing.
Of course, I knew who he was, as a writer and performer, and I was glad to meet
him at last, but most of our exchanges were corridor-moans, huddled rituals of
the profession, rather than shop-talk about our writing, though we probably
conducted the equally ritualistic dialogue about not finding enough time to
write with all the tiring teaching and marking, the tiresome admin. In any
case, the best people to talk about his role as a teacher are of course the
students, and I’d like to briefly quote one of them, Phillip Carter, now
finishing his second year:
As I’ve probably told you before, [he wrote me] the poetry society
would not exist had Dinesh not convinced me I was a salvageable poet. I think I
only missed one class and always stayed behind to chat about work with him. He
pointed out to me that I was a poet (not just a sci-fi writer who wrote poems
twice a day) and gave me the confidence to start the poetry society.
Philip can’t be here tonight
because he is performing at a poetry event somewhere out of town, which at one
level is a shame; at another, it’s testimony to everything Philip says about
Dinesh!
Dinesh was a public figure, a
non-specific role that could have ‘unintended consequences’. We held a party once
and invited Dinesh and Vic. Our son, Stephen, who at the time was volunteering
at the Museum of Liverpool Life (where there was, or is,
a handsome display of The Writers of Liverpool, complete with almost life-sized
photographs) walked up to Dinesh while I was chatting to him, and announced
boldly, in recognition: ‘You’re in our museum!’ Dinesh looked mildly startled,
stared first at Stephen, then at me, realised what Stephen had just said – and
the comic implications of it – and burst into laughter. We all did.
Come the aftermath of the
Capital of Culture year, who better to ask to join a group of important artists
and public figures – David Jacques, Lizzie Nunnery, Mandy Vere or [pause] Joe Anderson
– to comment on the future of radicalism in Liverpool
for a wonderful book, Liverpool: City of
Radicals, edited by John Belchem and Bryan Biggs in 2011?
Dinesh’s contribution was
pretty forthright, and struck me as remarkable for its refusal, his refusal, to become an exhibit in a self-regarding
Mirrored Hall of an Imaginary Museum of Liverpool Culture, uttering complacent
platitudes about his adopted city, providing cultural capital for the Capital
of Culture legacy by pushing a button marked ‘radical’ to crank-up an automatic
response. Absolutely not!
It is this short, mordant, regretful and poignant piece,
rather than his poetry (such as the long work written in praise of the blind
Liverpool poet Edward Rushton, who he also mentions in this piece), or from his
accumulating short stories of café life, or even from his, by turns,
entertaining and acerbic blog, that I have decided to read in his – I trust –
lasting memory.
Warning: this piece, like Archie
Shepp’s saxophone, shoots bullets! (There had to be a jazz reference somewhere
in here!)
Then I read:
‘Dinesh Allirajah, Poet’, in
eds. Belchem, J. and Biggs, B. Liverpool
City of Radicals.
Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2011:
190.
Read it! but before you do see this.
