The Liverpool-based historian, poet and author of Letters to Gil (2021) Malik Al Nasir provides this keynote talk at the Bluecoat.
Malik Al Nasir’s talk will connect the two strands of the Bluecoat’s Echoes and Origins project – colonial legacies and looked after children – drawing on a life experience that encompasses both.
This event is in collaboration with WOWFEST22.
This talk is part of a public events programme based around our exhibition, The Bluecoat’s Colonial Legacies. Find out more here.
About Malik Al Nasir
Malik Al Nasir is a Liverpool-born performance poet, film maker, social researcher and activist. His life has been the subject of much media attention internationally, following publication in 2021 of his widely acclaimed book, Letters To Gil, about his life in the care system and his remarkable relationship with Gil Scott-Heron. His meeting with the legendary American poet and musician was life-changing, as Scott-Heron took Malik under his wing and mentored him, from semi-literacy to a masters degree through poetry. He is now undertaking a PhD in history at the University of Cambridge.
Malik is now working on a new book (to be published by William Collins, an imprint of Harper Collins) about his roots back through slavery, to the slave plantations of Demerara in Guyana. He has been researching this for 15 years, making some remarkable discoveries that have featured on the BBC, as well as in The Times, The Daily Mail and The Wall Street Journal. Malik has produced and appeared in several factual documentaries with Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets, Benjamin Zephaniah, Public Enemy, and many other luminaries of the spoken word.
Follow Malik on Twitter and Instagram: @malikandtheogs
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