THE DREAD AFFAIR
1985, the year of the Cherry Groce uprising, was also memorable for a couple of other reasons. My book The Dread Affair was published – although it was my second book, it was my first with a big publisher – and I also became a star in the Eastern bloc.
The Dread Affair came about after I was approached by a woman who worked for a publishing company called Arena. They wanted to produce a collection of my poems, and they would give me a real contract and a substantial advance. I didn’t have a manager, so Arena explained to me that if I signed their contract I’d get my advance, and when I delivered the manuscript I’d get paid a second time, and then, on the day of publication, I’d get my final payment.
I signed on the dotted line there and then and went away to write down all my work as best as I could, by hand. It was easy; I had years of poems in my head. I went back the next day, showed them the contract and the results and, eager to get my payment, I said, ‘Right, that’s two thirds of my money now due.’
They wrote me a cheque and they published my poems but I think they, and I, made a big mistake. The book was well received but I think it was detrimental to me artistically. Arena published the poems just like that – no editing, no revisions, no feedback. Looking back now, I needed an editor – someone to help me think about how the poems could work on the page. All I did was write down performance poems, but ‘stage to page’ doesn’t always work.
I soon ended up not liking The Dread Affair, which is a sad thing to say about one’s own book, but I have to be honest: it’s a book of poems that lacks poetry, and it could have been so different. It reads like a first draft, or worse. I’m writing this in 2017, and all my other books are still in print, but not The Dread Affair. I have been asked to republish it but I keep saying no. As a compromise I have taken some poems from the book and rewritten them, but that’s as far as I’ll go.
I was later told by an ex-employee of Arena why they had published the book in its raw state. They thought I was some kind of god – the god of dub poetry – and they wouldn’t dare tell a god how to edit his poems. They were scared that if they told me something I didn’t like, they’d get a bad reaction and I wouldn’t let them publish the book. So they left me to my own devices. I’m sure I would have written a far better book if I had received some feedback or criticism, or had someone to talk to.
All this time there was something hanging over my head. The police were still looking for me. I expected them to catch up with me at any time. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t arrested me yet. I was arguing with police officers all the time on demonstrations, my books were everywhere and I was regularly on television. I could only put it down to a lack of communication between different police forces.
I would appear live on Channel 4, and I so feared being arrested that once the programme was done I would leave the studio straight away and run like mad. But the fear was getting to me. I knew I couldn’t go on like this. So I went back to Birmingham and gave myself up, but they wouldn’t arrest me. They said they had enjoyed watching me on TV, and they could have arrested me any time, but they’d already found the real killer of the man in the car and they knew it wasn’t me. They didn’t tell me because they enjoyed seeing me in public spaces, knowing I was living in a state of paranoia.
Actually, by now, I was living quite contentedly in another housing co-op place in Ruskin Avenue, East Ham. I wasn’t at home very often, as I was constantly creating new music and being active in the political protest movement, but Mum was still with me and life was throwing opportunities my way.