York poet Rory Motion goes to the heart of Africa for the BBC. Charles Hutchinson reports.

THE first time wandering York poet Rory Motion went to Malawi, in Central East Africa, he could not speak a word of the language.

No problem. "I went walking in the bush and learnt 50 words from the porters, and from those 50 words I made up a poem, using about 30 of them.

"I performed it to the local kids on the island of Liqoma, in the middle of Lake Malawi, who found it so amusing, they went around repeating it," Rory recalls of his 2002 trip.

"It was just a holiday trip but a poet is never on holiday," he says. To prove the point, upon his return Rory hit upon the idea of doing a programme for BBC Radio 4. "I said 'how about if I learn the language and come out to Malawi and do some performances for the villagers; would you be interested?'"

Rory had the advantage of already being a fixture on Radio 4 with his One Night Stanza series, and the Beeb was indeed interested.

On Thursday morning his subsequent African travels and Malawian performances in November and early December last year are the subject of a 30-minute feature entitled Hi Nyanja!

"Hi Nyanja! is a typographical error. It should be Chinyanja, which means language of the lake, but the BBC decided to stick with the typo!" Rory says.

It was in every sense a long journey. First he had to learn the language.

"I found Hoffman Piri via poet Jack Mapanje the former Malawian political prisoner now living in York. Hoffman is from Malawi and he's in York to study town planning; I probably spent six weeks with him, doing eight sessions, and the rest I did myself," Rory says.

He then set about writing poems: "Basically I came up with a half-hour set, mainly about animals, centipede footballers and wide-mouthed frogs and football, because I had to find a common subject!"

Off to Lake Malawi by plane, jeep and old Scottish ferry he went with his guitar, notebooks, dictionary and sound-man Steve Marshall. "We just went as tourists: we didn't say we were going to do some stuff for the BBC," says Rory. "We were going to a place you can't get to by road, only on foot or by boat, and it looks like it did when Livingstone visited all those years ago."

Rory performed first for staff at the Echo Tourist Lodge where he was staying, then to farm workers, an hour's boat ride away in Cobue, the capital of Nyasa province. "Some of the kids there had never seen a white man, so they ran away," Rory says.

His last stop was the village of Mbueca, where football, as so often, proved to be the universal language.

Rory said: "I bought them a couple of footballs, and now I'm the sponsor of their football team."

Hi Nyanja!, Rory Motion in Africa, BBC Radio 4, Thursday, 11.30am, repeated next Sunday, 12.15am. Rory Motion and The Travelling Libraries play The Winning Post, York, April 16, 8.30pm; admission £5, concessions £4. Rory's exhibition of pastels, drawings and installations will run at Lucius Gallery, Fossgate, York, in June.

Updated: 08:42 Saturday, April 02, 2005