This is an exclusive interview with Liverpool legend, John Barnes on Covert Racism, Coutinho and Fans’ Misplaced Priorities.
I heard Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I’m glad. More bemused than glad, however, at the contention of his honour, despite the fact that Homer and Sappho, both lyricists, are considered literary compasses, and then there’s Lord Tennyson who wrote sonnets and ballads. All texts of whom were meant to be performed, accompanied by instruments in provincial theatres.
What is poetry then if it is not an endeavour of an art despite itself to mostly compensate the inability of words with words? And what of poetry that extends the boundaries of the mind as well as the heart, poetry that elicits jubilation, romance juxtaposed with empathy and acceptance? How does one typecast transference? And what of all the poetry that exist without words?
As a nine-year-old, my first calling to poetry wasn’t in the pages of our primary school textbooks, it was in technicolour on our Sharp 26-inch lump of a cathode ray tube. One that had the faulty +Programme button, so you had to cycle through all the channels again if you weren’t paying attention.
A red speck of arms and legs on the far side; the sprightly stride of a gazelle evading its predators on the previous channel finds himself on the lush fields of Anfield Road to score another inspired goal. It was poetry in motion, and it was love at first sight. The interview with the poet has been two decades in the making – the embodiment of my childhood awe, and as I grew, of ethnic solidarity. Mentally, I went down memory lane, while physically going up the flight of stairs of the Lord Palmerston – an elegant Victorian-era gastropub on Darmouth Park Hill – and walking into a disarming handshake. Outside, it was a sun-kissed day in Central London. Inside, the function room seemed lit up by John Barnes’ greeting smile.