ADVENTURES IN RACIAL CAPITALISM

Kev Inn
(Waterloo Press, 2020); pbk £9

An entangled web of chains run through the Africa-shaped-afro of the figure on the front cover, complimenting the complex themes explored inside this poetry debut by Kev Inn, Adventures in Racial Capitalism. Here are stories of prejudice and hardships felt by the author to tales of home and hope. Presented on pages of yellow-toned paper, not white as you might expect; suddenly, I realise this may have been intentional—the first challenge of our biases even with something as subtle as paper.

Easy to read, featuring a range of exciting poetic forms including the use of found poetry such as outdated and offensive football chants, and nods to Shakespeare, these poems—sometimes one-page and even one-word—contain lively pages full of creative, visually represented thoughts and ideas. Inn even proposes an unexpected but enticing riddle poem, will you be able to solve it?

The poem ‘Underground train (of thought)’ forces us to mime the pace of time passing on the tube as we join the poet on his journey. Onomatopoeia and repetition used throughout this clever piece work together to create a rhythm which is familiar and mundane, and at the same time exciting enough to keep us reading on:

Click-clack, train-track,
Dum-dum, heart-drum,
Click-clack, train-track,
Dum-dum, heart-drum…

The sounds made by reading this piece aloud are almost satisfying for being musical. There are glimpses of momentary inner dialogue, inviting us ever closer to witness Inn’s true feelings and fears. It is admirable how he is so willing to be fully transparent and uncensored.

What struck me most about half-way through reading this book was Inn’s understanding of oppressions being interwoven; racial issues are understood within a wider political and social lens. An excerpt from ‘Fuck a cup of tea’ refers to the

Africans taken from their homelands to produce sugar,
Indians paid poverty wages for their labour,
Calves denied milk from their mothers!

The human cost of a cup of tea also bears animal costs in relation to the dairy industry.

One poem cleverly uses dialect words which most readers may not be able to understand; I think Inn knows and embraces this in an ironic way. Though there are similar words which we will all know and recognise, as in the line:

‘Não uso drogas! Você gostaria de uma prostituta?’
‘Err… Naaah, I try be errr… feministo.’

though we gather from the text that there is a conversation surrounding prostitution and feminism, it nonetheless introduces a tension and problem for readers to overcome. Turning the tables on us by getting across what it feels like to be an outsider here, not welcome, not involved in the conversation, or able to contribute to it.

Moments of beauty co-exist with grief throughout this poetry collection, and Inn lays it bare for us to see. Some poems are hard hitting, honestly written, and satirical, some are sweeter and more patient, but all are interesting – even the poem ‘Bl ghty (A one-word poem, after Ashua Hirsch’ which consists of just a single word.

This is certainly not a book to read once and put back on the shelf, reward is given to those who re-read and attend to it. New nuggets of information and smaller details will crop up that you may not have noticed before, making for an even more enriching experience each time. Adventures in Racial Capitalism is an eye-opener into the privilege many of us have and addresses the unjust (and largely unspoken about) issues still facing people of colour in contemporary Britain today. An enjoyable and necessary read.

Lauren-Marie Kennedy