Review: Later Life Letter by Luke Wright at The Lens, Portsmouth Guildhall
The poet Luke Wright, in town with Portsmouth Poetry and the Pompey Poetry Party to promote what sounds like a sensitive story of birth to adoption to now, swaggers on to the stage at the intimate Lens Studio, like a scruffy Joey Essex. Big hair, gold chain, grinning from ear to ear: “Oi oi Portsmouth!” “I’m a bit much, I know.”
But is he though? It soon becomes clear that there is more to this cheeky chappy than meets the eye. Wright feels defined by the sliding doors moment of his life - and is imbued with imposter syndrome that he might not be worth what came his way. The doors slid when, adopted at birth, nameless for the first eight days of his life, life takes him not to the council flat in South London as one of three boys and a single mother unable to cope. But instead, off to “Middle England, private schools down private roads.”
Actually his first stroke of luck came when as a two week old, he was “boarded out” to a kind lady who “nursed me’ soothed me; heard me.” The sparse notes from his adoption file give the lovely detail that “She slept in the front room with him, him in a pram so he could stay warm with the fire on.” Wright was soon formally adopted by his pragmatic, loving and comfortably off mother and father - and life begins ‘proper’ in Essex. He’s forever embarrassed and grateful from then on; constantly ‘checking my privilege’. He was a ‘fit’ baby; “Chubby cheeks; everyone adored me!” He is laughing - but he can’t believe it. And he knows it. “Have I got the stomach for this luck?”
Life begins again
His adoptive parents are solid, dependable; heaven sent to someone with a traumatic start in life. His adoptive mother had a difficult upbringing in Zimbabwe and couldn’t have children; but she never let those sadnesses define her. There’s sweetness and weight in hearing Wright tell of the moments with his mum and dad when they are being just that; buying him a childhood book called ‘I Am Adopted’ and making it normal; taking him to University; buying him a curry; telling him it’s OK to leave an unhappy marriage.; encouraging him to choose his own future. There’s poignancy too in his discovery of their backstory; like the terrible grief they hid when they adopted a first baby boy and were about to add his name to the Christmas cards when his birth mother claimed him back again. “They felt silly.” Our parents? They are people too. People he became the best of.
But was he also the worst or best of someone else too?
He may never know - but he can’t help but wonder. He finds his birthmother and siblings on social media “too easily” and checks in on them from afar without making contact. “She is on holiday. It is nice knowing she is there.” Wright can’t stop thinking about the brothers he might have bonded with or the father he knows virtually nothing about either. “Have we scanned the same crowds? Do we zone out on the sofa to different things?” But then he checks himself with a sweary impression of his dad:“Doubt it, mate. Rey!” If you don’t laugh, you cry.
Wright raises the energy in the room to new levels when he performs five mini versions of his mother’s story - “21 year old mum gives birth; claims she didn’t know she was pregnant” - as told by Daily Mail, Star Wars, a news reader with the mic off, a garage MC, (channelling the older brother he doesn’t know who is an acclaimed MC), and a version using “just using words with ‘I’s inspired by some avant garde poets in Paris.” It’s good to see him channelling the scholar, the poet, the Essex boy, the South London jungle MC. Everything he is and could have been. His charisma fills the room.
The film director Richard Curtis is quoted on the front of his book: “A deeply remarkable, deeply moving book. ” Author Holly McNish said: “I was bawling from the first page.”
Wright shouts: “I could spend my life being a tosser. I have a primal wound from being abandoned at birth you know, that’s why I am like this!” He mocks his pain. But he soon turns serious. “This is not a Hollywood ending. I have never met my birth family. And I probably never will. This story is about the future you choose.”
I am left thinking of the kindness of strangers. His parents who met the needs of a little boy they couldn’t keep; but then adopted two little boys they could love forever. The lady who slept with him in the front room so he could stay warm. His current partner Katy, a social worker who writes the ‘later life letters’ full of sensitivity for adoptees to read when they grow up. Can warmth, kindness and creativity heal the primal wound? On this evidence, yes it can.
Late Life Letter by Luke Wright is out now. Find out more at www.lukewright.co.uk