"The background's too strong, it needs to be whiter"

Benjamin Zephaniah has very kindly given me permission to use some of his poetry in this next piece of work. I have been reading his autobiography and poems and making notes of wonderful words I could use. In the end I thought his portrait which is one of the Windrush series, should feature his poem about Windrush, "The Men from Jamaica Are Settling Down".

I felt it was important that these words were readable, and not knocked back to become part of the piece so was wondering how I could do this. My background which is a collection of sketches/painting I'd made of Brum were too strong and the words wouldn't show, so wondered what I could do about that. I decided on a layer of gesso with the words then written on top.  I said to G, "the background's too strong, it needs to be whiter" and the title was born. My innards fizzed; it felt right. Thank you Benjamin!

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