MAY/JUNE 2023 ISSUE

Khadijah Ibrahiim’s grandparents came from Jamaica to the UK in the 1950s and she was born and raised in the Chapeltown and Harehills areas of Leeds. After graduating from the University of Leeds, Khadijah entered the world as an artist. She’s spent the last 30 years creating poems, performances, visual art, photographs, outfits – and lots more artistic work. She’s been described by the BBC as “one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poets.”

Khadijah’s work is rooted in her family and background; she fuses different parts of her heritage with the influences of her current surroundings to create artwork and writing. Khadi- jah was inspired by her grandparents to be an activist and to change the world for the better.

In 2003, Khadijah created Leeds Young Authors. The idea was to work with teenagers in Leeds and encourage them to write and perform. Khadijah was keen to dispel the myth that poetry was an outmoded form, so she focused on spoken word and poetry slams. Leeds Young Authors were so successful that a documentary feature film was made about them: We Are Poets was released in 2012 and told the story of young people from Leeds competing in the International Poetry Slam in Washington DC.

Kadijah continues to create artwork about her experiences. One of her most recent pieces was Dead and Wake, performed at Leeds Playhouse, in collaboration with Opera North. The piece explored Caribbean rituals around death through poetry, music, ghost stories. Khadijah collaborated with turntablist DJ NikNak, artist Paulette Morris and perform- ers from The Sunday Practice to create a moving and beautiful piece of theatre.

Writer and storyteller Ruth Steinberg meets Khadijah to share stories of oppression and triumph and to find out what makes this remarkable and uncategorisable artist tick.

You seem to do so many different things. How do you see yourself?

For me, the important thing is that I'm an artist. The way in which people may know me is through poetry. But also my interest is how to you support the next generation through the expression of words. The art of words, wordplay and performance. I developed Leeds Young Authors because in my younger days, I was really interested in poetry – and there was nowhere to go. I had this love for words and literature and it didn't seem to be the cool thing to do.

Tell me how you came to be the person you are today?

I went to a school of Performing Arts and trained in dance. My teachers really pushed the performing arts. I loved all the aspects of art and expression: dance, drama, drawing. But I came out of a household where my father was a professor of physics and chemistry. A lot of members of my family worked in the medical field – my grandmother was a nurse. So I thought that's the direction I ought to go in. They really pushed academia in the household. When I was younger, I saw the children playing outside - and I was inside reading. I was reading because I had to read, had to do my homework. I had a very old-school grandmother. You had to stand up and do mental arithmetic, recite things. And I thought that was such a chore! When I was born, I lived in my grandmother’s home. And I stayed with her a lot. It isn’t an unusual thing to happen in in a Caribbean household. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. And I loved their house - it was very creative, it was the house of activism. They were on the ground, campaigning for change. Along with this lady called Mrs Davis, they set up one of the first pre-schools in Chapeltown that would support children of that community. There was a community centre, where the teenagers could go down of an evening. Even though I didn't understand at the time, my grandparents were activists.

By the time I had left school, I was sewing, I was drawing, I was dancing, I was performing, I was reading books. But I had to make this choice about what I wanted to do after school. The careers teacher said, “You’re always doing people’s hair - go and do hairdressing.” I remember telling my grandmother and she said, “No.” She encouraged me to go into the arts, into fashion. So I did. I had this ambition that I would work in theatre, I would design theatrical costumes. And I could be amongst literature and plays - theatre was the place for me. But it never really panned out. I did my two years at Jacob Kramer College, which is now Leeds College of Art and Design. And I wanted to do a degree, but I my father had moved to the USA and I wanted to spend some time with him there. On my return, after a couple of years, I made this U-Turn into literature. I really want to work with the community and I wasn't sure what that looked like. I worked in a youth hostel and worked at a women's refuge. I was working with women and their children, using poetry and creative writing. I wanted them to be able to tell their story in the way that they wanted. Not a story about abuse and violence, but a story about the future and what the future could hold. After this, I got job at Women's Aid as the outreach worker. I could create my own job in the Harehills and Chapeltown community. I realised I could do health and well-being through writing.

Then off to university I went! I started late, I was in my late 20s. I did Arabic and Middle Eastern studies because I was interested in language and creative writing. The course gave me an opportunity to explore a different culture through language and I was able to travel as well. I went to Yemen and I was really pushing this love of literature. I started doing some volunteer work with UNESCO, working with asylum seekers and refugees coming from Syria and Somalia. And I taught English too. So when I when I got back to England, I decided I would do my masters straight away, to study theatre. It was there that I felt like I could make some real, definite decisions about what my life would be like. It was writing. It was theatre.

After I graduated, the first thing I did was to set up Leeds Young Authors. It was for young people who may be in households that were unsteady. The children just came from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds. You know, we had children from the Leeds Grammar School and they met children from the local schools in Harehills, Chapeltown, Bramley and Armley. We and had kids coming from Bradford. So it was very rich. The poetry was the thing. But in the background was a plan to work in the theatre. So, here I am today as a freelance artist doing poetry, working in theatre, writing plays and working with communities. And the fashion still plays an important part. I do style people. I can design and draw. Someone might ask me to style something or give them some ideas - or go wedding shopping with them! It's a side-line. And I paint in my spare time – and do a bit of photography. What I've learnt over the years is that when I'm creating my own work, I bring all of those elements into it.