Malik Al Nasir - Letters to Gil

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2021

Copyright Fore-Word Press 2021

Foreword Lemn Sissay 2021

Cover image courtesy of the author

Malik Al Nasir asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, Words and Music by Carlton Ridenhour, William Drayton, James Boxley III and Eric Sadler. Copyright 1988 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC., TERRORDOME MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, REACH GLOBAL SONGS, SHOCKLEE MUSIC and YOUR MOTHERS MUSIC, INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Hal Leonard Europe Limited and Reach Music Publishing, Inc.

Extract from Im New Here by Bill Callahan used with permissions of Mute Song Limited.

Some names have been changed throughout this book to anonymise certain individuals.

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Source ISBN: 9780008464479

Ebook Edition September 2021 ISBN: 9780008464455

Version: 2022-07-05

This book is dedicated to the woman from whom I derived my strength, my resilience and who gave me life my mother Sonia Parry.

Like the Mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridges ballad The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Malik Al Nasir has an incredible story to tell. His book Letters to Gil is part of a surge of literature from writers who have been fostered, adopted, orphaned or in childrens homes, who have been treated atrociously and who have lived to tell epic tales of betrayal and redemption. With Letters to Gil, Malik has joined this illustrious company of creative explorers of the universe: writers like Sally Bayley, Oscar nominee Samantha Morton, Jenni Fagan and the legendary Jeanette Winterson. Regardless of their personal biographies they are all storytellers. Commanders of the written word. Ciphers of the spoken word. They are fuelled by wild imagination, by hard-won facts and attention to detail.

Memory can be a haunting phantasm until the writer coaxes it onto the page. Its no surprise writers who have not experienced such dislocation as Malik employ the fostered, adopted or orphaned child in their fiction. Homer did it: Oedipus was a foundling. J.K. Rowling did it with Harry Potter. He was a foster child. The list is long: think of Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Lord of the Rings, Wuthering Heights. These all-star fostered, adopted or orphaned characters. Superman spent time in childrens homes and he was adopted!

There is something about the child who has spent time in care that fiction writers love, because without the classic family structure the child and adult digs deep to become the hero of their own story, be they Oliver Twist or Lyra Belacqua. These characters dont need a shocking back story for propulsion. They overcome adversity by becoming more of who they already are.

Enough of fiction. Maliks relationship with Gil Scott-Heron is magical, and his story of perseverance against all odds is real. What a life this man has had. And what a read you have ahead of you. The moment I finished the manuscript I called Malik on the phone to tell him how transfixed I had been by Letters to Gil, by the intimacy of the time he and Gil spent together and by his incredible life. Full disclosure: I have been a fan of Gil Scott-Heron for thirty-five years and I have known Malik for twenty-nine. This book was kind of made just for me which is how every book should feel.

My own connection with Malik, of which I am increasingly proud, began the day I encouraged him on to the stage. He recalls the moment in 2018, in the Edge Hill University magazine Degree.

[Malik] was coaxed into the arena by another North West poet, Lemn Sissay, who was performing with Jalal Nuriddin. Lemn asked to hear one of Maliks poems, told him it was good, and invited him to perform at the open mic event which followed the show.

I remember standing up there with my head bowed, and all these people staring at me, says Malik. And I was really self-conscious. Introducing myself saying Im Malik Al Nasir, Im not a poet. I am just an ordinary guy who happened to write some poetry. And then I launched into my poem and I got a standing ovation and that changed everything for me, that was the point that I realised that I could actually do this.

I feel proud to have played a small part in a great life. In our phone conversation, Malik said, I put the poems in my mothers cupboard and published them in December 2004. That debut collection was called Ordinary Guy by Mark T. Watson, as author, and Malik Al Nasir, as illustrator, with a Fore-Word by Jalal Nuriddin of the Last Poets, Harlems original protest poets.

Given that I have known Malik for so long, given that just a few years ago he helped me in my quest to sue the government for stealing my childhood, something he himself had done as part of a class action some years before, given all that how little I knew about his heroic life until I read Letters to Gil. Wow!

Like the Ancient Mariner, Malik found himself out at sea, literally and metaphorically. Like the Ancient Mariner, the crew turned against him. Like the Ancient Mariner, he was challenged and changed by the experience, in his case from Mark Watson to Malik Al Nasir; and like the Ancient Mariner, he was tested, traumatised and eventually transformed.

At a certain part of his mind-boggling life story, the spirit of Gil Scott-Heron filled Maliks sails. In Letters to Gil, you will be spirited away too, as I have been. You will learn much about Gil Scott-Heron, but it is Maliks story that transfixes me in its glittering eye. I love Gil Scott-Heron, as a fan. Maliks relationship with him is more than fandom. In Letters to Gil, I see Malik emerge from under the wing of the Gil Scott-Heron. And I think to myself, How did he do it? This miraculous man, one of us, this complex and beautiful hero.

Lemn Sissay, June 2021

Its June 2nd, 2011, and I am sitting in a church on the East Side Highway in Harlem, New York, watching Kanye West perform his hit Lost in the World. West is the most successful rapper in the world and he doesnt normally arrive at events without fanfare and a huge entourage. But today, hes come with just his manager. I dont usually sit in a church these days, but this time, Ive made an exception.

Kanyes here to pay tribute to the poet, musician and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron a man who inspired his own career and many others. Lost in the World contains a poem entitled Comment #1 from Gil Scott-Herons debut album, which had launched the radical black poet onto the world stage back in 1970. Kanye, famous for sampling the great masters, had decided to take the whole poem and wrap his rap around it.