To Do Wid Me

Bloodaxe's first full-length feature film released on DVD

To Do Wid Me is both a Selected Poems by Benjamin Zephaniah and a film portrait of Benjamin Zephaniah by Pamela Robertson-Pearce drawing on both live performances and informal interviews. The film shows him performing his poetry for different audiences and talking about his work, life, beliefs and much else. You see him live on stage at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Newcastle's Live Theatre, Hexham's Queen's Hall and Brunel University, and engaging with school children at Keats House in London, where he was writer-in-residence.

The poems are drawn from his three Bloodaxe collections, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001), as well as from his earlier collection The Dread Affair (1985).

The book supplements the film and includes the texts of all the poems and songs from the film and videos. As well as the main film, the DVD also has a bonus feature: music videos made by Zephaniah with the Beta Brothers.

The DVD is PAL format compatible with DVD players in most countries apart from Canada, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan and the United States but playable on laptops produced for those countries.

To Do Wid Me was followed in 2025 by a second selection of Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetry for adults. Dis Poetry: Selected Poems & Lyrics (Bloodaxe Books, 2025) includes all the poems from his three Bloodaxe collections, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black Too Strong (2001), as well as some from The Dread Affair (Arena, 1985), along with previously unpublished work and lyrics from various recordings. A QR code printed in Dis Poetry links to Pamela Robertson-Pearce’s film portrait of Benjamin Zephaniah from To Do Wid Me.

'An exuberant experiment in poetry publishing, as it is not meant to be simply read but seen and heard.' – World Literature Today

'I loved it. I’d already known from watching her films on Vimeo that Pamela Robertson-Pearce is a good director who knows how to get out of the way and let the poems and the poet speak for themselves, and this talent is very much on display here. I watched the DVD in two long sittings and was entranced… The film is playful and serious by turns, just as Zephaniah’s poems are, and gave me a lot to think about, especially on the role of performance in poetry, the social responsibility of artists, and the various ways in which oral and literary traditions intersect… Brilliant performance poets like Zephaniah remind us that poetry is first and foremost an oral, embodied medium. Zephaniah’s example challenges us to take living more seriously, and to question whether our words and actions and politics are truly aligned as they should be. And needless to say, for a type of poetry that so emphasizes the physicality of language, film/video is the ideal medium. Neil Astley’s Foreword in the book offers a more comprehensive biography than any I’ve seen online, and people who already own some or all of Zephaniah’s earlier books with Bloodaxe and Penguin will want this one, too, since it includes different versions of many poems, updated to reflect how they have evolved as he continues to perform them on stage' – Dave Bonta, movingpoems.com

'The two-hour DVD tucked into the back cover of To Do Wid Me encapsulates four years of filming by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. The footage of 18 poems from five live performances is intercut with interviews at his home and with his eloquent mother Valerie. Every word of the poems on the DVD is printed in the book... In 2009 a BBC poll voted Zephaniah Britain's third favourite poet of all time after T. S. Eliot and John Donne. While he is in his way as musical as Eliot and as witty as Donne, To Do Wid Me reinforces my sense that he is permanently atop an alternative galaxy where other superstars...include Bob Marley and William Blake.' – Michael Horovitz, The Times

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958-2023) was a writer and performer of extraordinary range: an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children’s writer, reggae artist, actor, television personality and political activist. Born in Birmingham, he grew up in Handsworth, where he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and ‘a born failure’, ending up in jail for burglary and affray.

After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He was voted Britain's third favourite poet of all time (after T.S. Eliot and John Donne) in a BBC poll in 2009. In 2011 he was poet-in-residence at Keats House in 2011, and then made a radical career change by taking up his first ever academic position as a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University in West London.

His many acting roles included preacher Jeremiah ‘Jimmy’ Jesus in Peaky Blinders, and he played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare’s Pericles in 2005. He was a regular panellist on BBC One's Question Time. 

Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults – and his poetry with attitude for children – he had his own rap/reggae band. He produced numerous recordings, including Dub Ranting (1982), Rasta (1983), Us and Dem (1990), Back to Roots (1995), Belly of de Beast (1996), Naked (2004) and Revolutionary Minds (2017). He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President’s Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.

His first book of poems, Pen Rhythm, was produced in 1980 by a small East London publishing cooperative, Page One Books. His second collection, The Dread Affair, was published by Hutchinson’s short-lived Arena imprint in 1985. He published three collections with Bloodaxe, City Psalms (1992), Propa Propaganda (1996) and Too Black, Too Strong (2001), the latter including poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case. His DVD-book To Do Wid Me: Benjamin Zephaniah live and direct (filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce) followed from Bloodaxe in 2013. His posthumous retrospective Dis Poetry: Selected Poems & Lyrics – published 15 April 2025 – brings together all the poems from Benjamin’s three Bloodaxe collections, City Psalms, Propa Propaganda and Too Black, Too Strong, as well as some from The Dread Affair, along with previously unpublished work and lyrics from various recordings.

His other titles include his poetry books for children, Talking Turkeys (1994), Funky Chickens (1996) and Wicked World (2000), all from Puffin/Penguin; his novels for teenagers, Face (1999), Refugee Boy (2001), Gangsta Rap (2004) and Teacher’s Dead (2007), all from Bloomsbury; The Bloomsbury Book of Love Poems (1999); Schools Out: Poems Not for School (1997) and The Little Book of Vegan Poems (2001) from AK Press; and We Are Britain (Frances Lincoln, 2003). He published his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes and Benjamin Zephaniah, with Simon & Schuster in 2018. Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetry book for young children, Leave the Trees, Please, illustrated by Melissa Castrillon, was published by Magic Cat Publishing in April 2025.