Loki’s words pack punch
Success with searing book and live festival show
IT has been a whirlwind few months for Darren McGarvey. The Glasgow rapper – known as Loki – won the Orwell Prize for his memoir Poverty Safari in June. He’s since had film and television companies vying for the rights to his life story and enjoyed a soaring public profile.
In person, there is a shyness that bel ies his out spoken reputat ion. McGarvey’s eyes dart warily as he attempts to get the measure of any agenda I may have brought to the table.
It may seem as if McGarvey, 34, has suddenly exploded into the public consciousness, but the man himself insists it has been a slow burn since last November when Poverty Safari, a searing account of his life growing up in the deprived Pollok area on the South Side, was published.
McGarvey has built his profile through the likes of Twitter and Facebook, candidly sharing all facets of his life and interacting with a legion of followers.
But, equally, such platforms have made him openly accessible.
“I enjoy social media. It is only the last couple of years that I have recognised that it’s not just a megaphone – it is a number of publ ic squares,” he says. “You start realising that anything you say can be reframed or interpreted in multiple ways depending on what kind of day someone is having.
“Suddenly you get drawn in to all sorts of things that you never intended to because it is subject to interpretation by every single person reading your words.”
That is because, he says, human beings communicate better face to face. In cyberspace even the best intentions can become skewed, misunderstood or hijacked.
“Because we see everything through the lens of our own experience,” says McGarvey. “Sometimes I can let myself down. There was a time when I used to enjoy being provocative for the sake of it. I come from a hip- hop culture where that is almost a prerequisite of authenticity.
“I also talk about other issues that aren’t related to hip- hop which are quite sensitive. I learn through making mistakes. At first you have that initial feeling of defensiveness, but I try to sit with that rather than let it orientate my politics.”
We’re building up to addressing the controversy that McGarvey became embroiled in two years ago when he made a film, Gaslight, during a stint as rapper- in- residence at Police Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit. To his credit, it is McGarvey who raises the topic unprompted. “There have been times in the past where my intentions would become completely distorted or obscured,” he says.
“I did a video a few years ago around gender- based violence. I had been given a brief by the Violence Reduction Unit to create something that targeted young men, either at risk of perpetrating that behaviour or in the midst of it.
“When the VRU decided not to release it – I think because they were anxious about the response – I released it myself. I had never conducted anything of that scale, so there was no PR roll- out. The audience weren’t made aware of the brief I had, which was to target young men.
“A lot of people, particularly women’s groups, came to it with an idea that I had been pathologising domestic abusers and creating a sympathy narrative. Which was completely not the case. What I was trying to do was create a mirror for them to self- identify.”
That steep learning curve, says McGarvey, will form part of his show Poverty Safari Live, which runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this month.
“It will attempt to show how an experience like that