Slam Poem: Evert Eden – “Jabulani (Ballad for my Brother)”

Guest post by Evert Eden aka Adam Ash!

This is the one poem I’ve written that can make me cry, because I love my brother. I had to cut it down to make it work as a slam poem, and I don’t rightly know where the original poem is. It’s a poem that, if I perform it right, is really moving, but it’s quite difficult to get it right. I once read this poem, really a praise song to my brother, in South Africa, with my brother in the audience. The next day he told me that listening to the poem was like taking acid. He made me promise never to read the poem in South Africa again, although I was free to perform it anywhere else.

This is what’s known as the problem of two writers living together: You’re not allowed to steal my life, it’s my material, not yours. But then Aldous Huxley wrote brilliantly about his literary crowd in Point Counterpoint,so that even an outsider who just read a few literary magazines would know who the real-life people were on whom all his characters were based. The novel was a classic of its day, because he had stolen everyone’s life around him — and did it brilliantly.

OK, some links. My book of poems, Suck My Poem, is available here, and my novel Vagina Rebel is available here.

These days I’ve reincarnated myself as Adam Ash, singer-songwriter, who performs solo and with his band the Dingbots. Check out my band’s CD here and follow my music career here, where you can also listen to three of my songs, including the rather bizarre My Girlfriend Got Freaky with a Strap-on.

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