Pioneering street poet Benjamin Zephaniah inspired young artists to turn adversity to their advantage in a charismatic lecture at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU).
The writer and musician, famed for his energetic performance poetry, told students taking the English BA module in contemporary poetry about the challenges he faced as a young black man growing up in Birmingham and London in the 1970s.
Photo by Sean Goldthorpe, Photography MA
One of those was his dyslexia, which he said contributed to his unique phonetic writing style.
He said: "There's only one language which anyone with dyslexia can understand and that's Chinese writing. These are often pictures of the things they are describing - the word woman looks like a woman.
"So going from this to a squiggle which bears no resemblance to the real thing is actually a strange step. I don't think dyslexia should hold you back; it actually gives you a unique perspective."
It was an insight which chimed with Drama and English student Sophie Olley, who is herself dyslexic.
She said: "The success he has had, while being dyslexic and having the background and childhood he did, inspires me. His success is down to how he has expressed himself, how he realised that all the things people might see as adversity were actually the things that made him unique. That's inspirational.
"With my dyslexia, the support I get from DMU is brilliant. I'm sent lecture notes early, which really aids me because I struggle with my short term memory. And the university also provides me with a proofreading service. But at the same time, I don't feel different or special - it's really well balanced."
Zephaniah, who was last year awarded an honorary degree by DMU, is well known for speaking out on political issues as well as making poetry relevant and accessible.
He said: "Poetry is everywhere. People see it in books or being studied and define it only in this way. But for me, we are all poets.
"You might wake up and think 'why is the grass green? What would happen if it was red?' That's a poetic thought and these occur to people all the time; that's my theory.
"The difference is that I - and other poets - sit down and write that out, try and think through what would happen if the grass was red. We're all poets - it's just that some of us are in the closet."
He spoke about the importance of multi-culturalism, praising the way many different races live together peaceably in Leicester.
"We are multi-cultural by nature," he said. "Depends how far back you want to go to find a pure human being - an ancestor in Africa thousands of years ago. But since then we have blended and mixed and now we are all, every one, multi-cultural."
He also praised the choice of Baroness Doreen Lawrence as DMU's new Chancellor: "Doreen is what we call in the streets a 'roots woman'. She'll tell you she was a normal house wife. And then her son was murdered and she wanted to do something about it.
"She has raised awareness for all people in this country and she makes a great chancellor, not being a white man in a grey suit, not being privileged, it shows what anyone is capable of."
Posted on Friday 12 February 2016