In his debut novel, the London author blends fiction with biography, resulting in a searing coming-of-age tale that deals with identity, heritage and mental health. A year after winning the prestigious Desmond Elliott prize, the 33-year-old – whose inspirations range from D.H. Lawrence to grime MCs – wants to continue the work he’s begun: sharing stories about Black British life that move beyond tired, two-dimensional tropes.
Text: Robert Kazandjian – Photography: Jackie Dewe Mathews
A POLITICIAN
✱ This profile includes references to self-harm and suicide. 18TH CENTURY ENGLISH POET AND HYMNIST WILLIAM Cowper was a deeply troubled man. His adult life was disrupted by waves of mental illness, which resulted in delusions, suicide attempts and commital to an asylum.
In 1782, when Cowper was experiencing a bout of severe depression, his friend and muse Lady Anna Austen told him the story of the wealthy yet hapless draper, John Gilpin and his runaway horse. Gilpin was on his way to celebrate his 20th wedding anniversary at the Bell Inn, in Edmonton. His horse had other ideas and bolted off up the bridleway, carrying them both 10 miles further north than intended to the Hertfordshire town of Ware. The story inspired Cowper’s popular comic ballad – ‘The Diverting History of John Gilpin’ – and stabilised his mental health in the process.
The pub still stands, now known as The Gilpin’s Bell. It sits prominently on the faultline between the North London boroughs of Enfield and Haringey, as Edmonton’s Fore Street ends and Tottenham High Road begins. Broadwater Farm Estate is a 10-minute drive away, home to nearly 5,000 people and twice the epicentre for resistance against police brutality: first after the death of Cynthia Jarrett during a raid of her home in 1985, and then following Mark Duggan’s shooting by armed police in 2011.
On matchdays, The Gilpin’s Bell is a raucous fueling station for Tottenham Hotspur fans. But when I meet author and poet Derek Owusu there on a warm September evening, it’s empty – other than for a group of elderly regulars quietly sharing memories in a sunlit booth. This neglected pocket of the city is where we both grew up and went to school. We’ve only met physically once before – at the 2019 launch of That Reminds Me, Derek’s debut novel-in-verse, which won the prestigious Desmond Elliott prize last year.
Through fragments of intricately detailed prose-poetry, it tells the coming-of-age story of ‘K’, a working-class British-Ghanaian boy. K is placed in foster care in Suffolk as a baby and experiences love and trauma in the English countryside. While
