A Weekend In Butetown

Gwyneth Lewis explores the contemporary life and fascinating history of the largest Somali community outside Somalia as National Theatre Wales visits Butetown in Cardiff for a one-off reclaiming of a unique migratory and poetic heritage.

In the days when Cardiff was one of the shipping centres of the world, it's docks areas became special multicultural, multilingual communities. These port areas were often isolated from the cities around them, while at the same time closely connected to places thousands of miles away.

One of the biggest communities to thrive in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, as it was called, was made up of Somali sailors and tradespeople, who settled half way up the Bristol Channel in such numbers that it became the largest Somali community outside Somalia itself.

Inside that community, they kept alive the traditions and stories of their relatives in the way that generations of Somalians had done - through story telling and poetry. As the 60s turned to the 70s and 80s, these stories were still told in terraces in Butetown (the ideal workers house village built for the dockers by the Lord Bute, and cassettes of the storytellers in Cardiff and back home would travel beween the two places on the ships.

The first production in National Theatre Wales' third season, De Gabay [The Poem] was a two-day, site-specific exploration of the Butetown area of Cardiff, with a focus on the lives of its young Somali poets and the generations that came before them.

In this programme poet (and transatlantic sailor) Gwyneth Lewis visits Butetown as the performance comes through the community. She talks to members both young and old and listens to their stories and their poetry. She asks about their traditions of theatre, and how the community has kept its cultural independence within Wales for so many years.

The backdrop of the theatre weekend itself, with its street parades and public performance, sits alongside the very personal stories of the community today.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.

Gwyneth Lewis explores the fascinating history of the Somali community of Tiger Bay.