Description
American carnivals had a clown called the bozo, whose patter was drawn entirely from reshaping what the audience said to him—an improvisation of precise timing, at risk from the rubes. Khaled Hakim is a bozo on the loose among the culturati, reflexivity on legs, ignoring the rule that analysis is what you do to lower-status people. His work is an act of gratitude for the trauma of having other people demonstrate how well they know your culture. His evocation of overgrown, blown, briar-draggled wild patches of Birmingham is extraordinarily touching.
— Andrew Duncan
Containing twelve anti-poems / stand-up comedy routines from the early eighties through to the late nineties, this volume is at once Khaled Hakim’s earliest and latest work. In a style later developed by comedians such as Sacha Baron Cohen, Hakim’s persona Sister Ray acts as a lightning-rod for the malevolent energies that electrified Thatcherite Britain – the rage, the racism, the rioting – a satirical embodiment of the spirit animating that era – in venues ranging from cabaret nights, to poetry events, to a Young Conservatives Club (!).
Eliciting reactions that range from the very worst (think Borat) to the very best (think Tony Benn or Germaine Greer earnestly correcting Ali G), Hakim renders all equally ridiculous, part of the comedy. As with any stand-up routine what the comedian actually
says is only half of what the audience is there for: the reactions Sister Ray elicits being an integral part of the show. Wait for the critical-reception to
The Routines! The comedy is assuredly only beginning as you finish this book…
Engaging with the anarchic spirit of early twentieth-century Modernism, Hakim’s Routines are essential to anyone seeking to understand the Dionysian energies that are an inextricable component in any democratic system. How best to respond and engage effectively with these in an era in which professional clowns have moved from political-satire (Boris), reality-TV (Trump) and the stand-up revue (Beppe Grillo) to the very pinnacle of our political power-structures, riding the tide of politically-incorrect irony from the late-nineties on into a terrifying twenty-first century. Hakim offers us an insight into the comedic techniques of such crowd-masters in a book as illuminating as Machiavelli’s (deeply subversive) self-help-guide on How To Be An Effective Renaissance Prince, a book that played a seminal role in earlier struggles with irresponsible executive power.
Khaled Hakim has a background in film production and in poetry, publishing sparingly in the 1990s as the first BAME experimental poet in the UK. He regarded himself as primarily a semi-improvisatory performer. He left both film and writing in the early 2000’s to pursue a spiritual path, becoming a Sufi musician. He returned to poetry in 2016.
His published works include ‘Letters from the Takeaway’ (Shearsman 2019), ‘The Book of Naseeb’ (Penned in the Margins 2020), and now the collected performances ‘The Routines’ with Contraband Books.
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