Jacob Sam-La Rose is a Black British poet who writes and performs, as well as an educator and editor. Well-known for his support of youth slam poetry and his multicultural influences, Sam-La Rose is regarded as an innovative poet who creates measured and concise works.
Jacob Sam-La Rose: biography
Jacob Sam-La Rose was born in London in 1976. His heritage is British-Guyanese. He started his working career in the digital industry, becoming Managing Director of a web development firm before becoming a poet. Sam-La Rose mentions that he has been a reader of poetry since his teens but became more invested in creating poetry in his twenties.
He is private about his personal life, with very limited details available on his upbringing or his current life outside of work. As a poet, he has established himself as a talent who creates innovative work, as well as an educator who brings poetry to the youth.
Sam-La Rose's debut pamphlet, 'Communion' (2006) was released to critical acclaim, winning a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice award. His first collection, Breaking Silence (2011) was shortlisted for an Aldeburgh Fenton and a Forward Award.
His poems and essays have been featured in anthologies like Out of Bounds: British Black and Asian Poets (2012). Sam-La Rose’s works have also been translated into French, Dutch, Portuguese and Latvian. As a performer, he has appeared at festivals from Finland to Scotland.
In addition, Sam-La Rose is an educator who believes that poetry can change lives. As a mentor who promotes contemporary style poetry, he currently runs the Barbican Young Poets and is a lecturer on Goldsmith’s Spoken Word MA programme.
He describes himself as:
Jacob Sam-La Rose: context
Sam-La Rose’s influences are vast and multicultural. His early poetry was centred on hip hop culture, questions of self, identity and adopted or assumed identities. These adopted identities were largely related to hip hop and the influence of American hip hop on him as a Black British man with Guyanese heritage.
He is also a reader of diverse styles of poetry who embraces investigating other schools of thought and backgrounds. In addition to his many cultural influences, he draws on his experience in the technology profession to influence the sometimes-staid world of poetry.
About finding his voice, he has said:
…which is a marriage of all of those influences but is very much more me. In the past I may have directly engaged with clichés, tropes, more celebrated aspects of African American cultures that are now ours and questioning that – at some point I was heavily into the Caribbean voice and what it means to adopt that – now my voice is me, my Black British identity, myself, rooted in who it is I am now.' 1
Guyana is a country in South America with a famous capital, Georgetown. Previously a Dutch and a British colony, it became independent in 1966. Guyana has a diverse population and is the only South American nation that has English as an official first language. In practice, many people speak Guyanese Creole.
Jacob Sam-La Rose: books
Breaking Silence was published in 2011 and firmly established Sam-La Rose’s literary career. With themes of the masculine self and shifting identities, race and dual heritage, the book is Sam-La Rose’s first and only full-length collection.
The collection's influences range from the 1980s hip hop that came out of Queens, New York to traditional Guyanese cuisine. The works of this collection are currently studied as part of the British A-level syllabus.
The poems in Breaking Silence are united by connected themes and a carefully considered structure. Let's take a look at a few.
What are your musical influences? Have other countries influenced your identity through the music you listen to?
Jacob Sam-La Rose: poems
Jacob Sam-La Rose has said that poets who are more inspired by hip hop than by Robert Lowell or John Milton are finding ways to define their identities. An example of this philosophy is evident in his Run-D.M.C.-inspired poem, 'Talk this Way' (2011).
Jacob Sam-La Rose: 'Song for a Spent 100W Bulb'
This poem is a modern ode in free verse. Sam-La Rose explores the poetic nature of an object of utility, namely a light bulb. Another central theme is that of hip hop, with references to 'MCs' and 'mics'.
By creating a free-verse ode to a lightbulb that features multiple hip-hop references, Sam-La Rose subverts the ode on a subject matter and structural level. The lightbulb is glamorous, not typically ode subject matter material. The use of free verse rather than blank verse subverts the form of the traditional ode.
too bright to live long,
too costly, my mother feared
your appetite, guzzling the mains,
hung from the ceiling, little sun
I rhymed into, close as I could stand,
imagining the bulbed head of the mic,
searing fistful of feverish light
against my face—suddenly emptied,
plinked out, no longer able to beat back
the dark, capable only of cooling
after-image, of dying
memory, milky glass shell
and filament jangle, capable
of being held, of being rolled
in a boy’s hot palm, singing
one soft, blind note.
In hip hop, an MC or Emcee is the 'Master of Ceremonies' or rapper. In the old days of hip hop, rappers used to use MC in front of their stage names. An example of this trend was the mainstream artist, MC Hammer.
Jacob Sam-La Rose: 'Talk This Way'
Another hip-hop reference from his Breaking Silence collection is the poem 'Talk this Way'. The title of this poem directly references a rock/hip hop crossover track called 'Walk This Way' (1986) which was performed by Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith.
The poem is only two sentences long, with one long 20 lines sentence and one short, affirming final sentence of one line. Combined into one stanza, the effect created mirrors the extent of Sam-La Rose’s multiple influences, his appreciation of them all and his final decision to find his voice.
Dear boys on road,
dear girls on bus
top decks, dear hip-hop, dear love letters
pressed deep into vinyl platters, dear Americas,
Jamaica and East End –
dear Queen's best
cool and clipped as seams pressed sharp
in spite of noon day sun high in a Guyanese sky,
dear received pronunciation, dear raw, unfettered
music of my motherland once removed, dear music
smuggled in the old-fashioned way, beneath the folds
of skirts and blouses in a hard leather suitcase,
in the bones of flying fish and guava cheese,
cassava bread, in the notes of spilt casrip
loosed from broken bottles –
dear music
melting in the cauldron and pit, dear molten
brogue we birthed and spanked to wailing heights,
dear empty spaces, dear silence –
thank you for your many tongues.
Now, to find my own.
Jacob Sam-La Rose: 'A Life in Dreams' analysis
'A Life in Dreams' is an earlier poem of Sam-La Rose’s and is worth looking at separately from his collection, Breaking Silence.
Structurally, this free verse poem has 14 stanzas of varying lengths from a few monostichs to a heptastich. Thematically, the poem is about life, dreams and everything from bones to kung-fu, kisses and silence. Related through a third-person narrator, the poem explores the past and experiences already lived.
A monostich stanza has only one line.
A heptastich has seven lines.
Poetic devices like the repetition of the phrases 'there have been' and 'there has been' create the sense of past experiences and reflection. Enjambment in the first stanza creates rhythm and links the 'teeth' to the 'petals' and 'bones' at a punctuation level to work in conjunction with the simile. La-Rose creates a vivid impression of many teeth that have fallen out, probably due to a fight. He compares them to 'petals' and 'bones', things that they are and what they are not. Hard bones and soft petals. The enjambment reinforces the connection he creates with his juxtaposed simile.
There have been teethfalling loose from their socketslike a shower of petals or bones.
There has been treacle;attempts to run against a gravity wound so tighttight single steps were futile,a travelling nowhere,a running on the spot,a fanged leer and a gnarled handinching ever closer.
There have been glorious revolutions in unnamed countries,wars against tyrants,troops like legions of swarming beetles.There have been blades, flashing at the sun.
Once or twice, a fluency in kung-fu.
Up has mostly been up,though has been convincingly turnedon its head.
There have been drives down unfamiliar streets,the front of a car crumpledlike a denim pulled fresh from the wash.Once, a mobile home.
There have been more than a few kisses. Schoolclassrooms and corridors.A hiding place in a primary attic.
There have been clothes, forgottenand remembered too late.A numbness of gums.
Weightlessness.Unassisted flight.Falling but never hitting the ground.Fearas solid and realas table tops or bed-frames.
There has been silence,
the power of sound cleft from the mouth,the jaw gummed with quiet, the throatemptied of ammunition.
There has been love.
There have been messagespassed back and forth between hemispheres, metaphorslike acres of fortune cookies.
All this, behind shuttered and fluttering eyesand, I’d wager, some of the best,where everything moved like snowfalland time itself was as delicate as a snowflake,melting on the tongue.
Jacob Sam-La Rose - Key takeaways
- Jacob Sam-La Rose is a Black British poet born in London in 1976.
- He regards himself as a poet who happens to both perform and write.
- As well as being a well-regarded poet, he is a prolific educator and mentor in the Slam poetry space.
- Sam La-Rose has a dual British-Guyanese heritage and was extensively influenced by American and British hip hop growing up in London.
- His full collection is Breaking Silence. It covers themes of masculine identity, dual heritage and of course, hip hop.
1. Hannah Silver, 'A bit of a talk with Jacob Sam-La Rose', Hannahsilver. 2018.
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