Rhythm and voice

Even the normally deafening peak hour Mumbai traffic ceased to disturb after a while. Zena Edwards had managed to graciously meld it into the rhythm of her poetry. All that one heard was the sensuous delivery of the soulful poet as she sang, read and laughed her way through her first performance in India, organised by the British Council.

Edwards is a British new generation performance poet, the kind that are denied credibility by academics. For her, "Words are vehicles for thoughts but it is the tone of voice that makes the difference, and the music that helps it along."

It's a pleasure watching Edwards perform. It's her rich, throaty voice that draws you in first, followed by her richness of expression. The language is contemporary and clever. The grooves are far more African tribal than hard-edged Tottenham, the hardscrabble neighbourhood she grew up in.

She uses African instruments to layer her verse. The musicality is as much in the music as in her tone and her silences. The stories are of filial love, of laughter, of urban isolation and office romances.

Edwards has been earmarked as one of the fastest rising constellations in the UK performance poetry scene. "I came into it late," she admits. The 37 year-old actually performed before she wrote poetry, fronting two bands (one contemporary jazz and the other acid-soul) in the early 90s. "But I didn't enjoy singing other people's songs, or the loyalty to a single music style", says Edwards.

What eventually led her to poetry was when she joined an all girl acapella group called Shades. During a band tour to South Africa, when she met who was to later become her mentor "" world musician Pops Mohammed, she began working with traditional musicians, like the bushmen from Namibia, and incorporating musical styles from them.

She explains, "I learned the Kalimba (the thumb piano that she uses in her live performances) from the Xhosa tribe (Nelson Mandela is Xhosa speaking). It was Pops who first made me get up and perform in front of the tribespeople, saying 'It's your turn'. Edwards found herself penning her first poem called The Awakener and the Healer and then performed it at an open mic session in Johannesburg, accompanied by a bass player. "Performing poetry just felt so right," she says.

Having found herself in South Africa, she returned to Britain and began participating in all the open arenas in London. Is it ever confusing for her, being both musician and poet? "I hear rhythm and beats when I write. I cannot separate the two," she says. "It is a lot of fun experimenting with rhythm and voice."

Edwards is dismissive of critics of the live-art form. "Nothing is right or wrong," she snaps back, "you should develop your own measures of what is good or bad." "I love the form of a sonnet or a haiku," she continues, "and I will use repetition, and alliteration and rhyme to shape my work, but I will not be trapped by any of it." In any case critics don't matter so much, for Edwards tours extensively and glows from audience appeciation.

Edwards mentions her love for dancing often. Is that another talent waiting to spring forth? "Well, I have performed my poetry while others have danced around me," she smiles. The lack of formal training doesn't stop her from smuggling in a sashay into her performance.

"Ultimately I think of myself as a storyteller. I love creating worlds for audiences with images,"she says. There is a long pause. "Forgive me," says Edwards, "I think delirium is setting in." She's performed in three cities across two countries in three days.

"Cross your fingers for me. I've been shortlisted for the first ever Arts Foundation Performance Poetry Award in the UK," she adds as she gets up, relieved to be released from the tedium of being "on show". Something tells me she should be getting her acceptance speech ready.