Colin Grant and Yomi Ṣode Chaired by Miles Young

Writer and former BBC producer Colin Grant and poet and playwright Yomi Sode talk about the Black British experience and how it is expressed in their works.

Grant’s memoir I’m Black so you don’t have to be references a saying of his uncle. He was told that if he worked hard and became a doctor his race would become invisible. However, Grant, born in Britain to Jamaican parents, says the reality turned out different. He tells his story through a series of intergenerational portraits of family members. Together they provide a powerful insight into his own shifting sense of identity and into the Black British experience. Grant is a former BBC producer and wrote a series of drama documentaries. He is also author of Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, and Bageye at the Wheel.

Sode’s first collection of poems, Manorism, explores the lives of Black British men and boys. He writes about family, survival, generational trauma and the complexities of belonging. At its heart is the pressure of code-switching – changing behaviour to suit different cultural contexts and environments. Sode uses the artist Caravaggio and commentators such as David Starkey and Piers Morgan as a lens to consider differences of impunity afforded to white and Black people. Sode is a Nigerian British writer and winner of the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. His one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences. His play and breathe . . . . premiered at the Almeida Theatre in 2021 to rave reviews.

Discussions are chaired by the festival president and warden of New College, Oxford, Miles Young.