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WELCOME TO PANTHER NEWSLETTER
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BCA PATHFINDERS (1979)

Later re-named 

Small Heath Panthers 

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SMALL HEATH PANTHERS BASKETBALL CLUB
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 (Back Row from left to right):  (7) Ricky Tait, (10) Michael (Logey) Logue (Deceased), (8) Martin (Fari) Sargent, Kieth Green (Manager/Coach), (13) Patrick Morrison, (12) Trevor (Percy) Duffus, (11) Julian (JT) Tait.  (Front Row from left to right):  (9) Tony (Sinners) St Juste (Player/Coach), (5) Snowdon (Danny) Reid, (4) Norman Samuda Smith, (6) Chris (Daddy) Mortlock.
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Welcome to Panther Newsletter, your new monthly bulletin which will be Thought Provoking, Creative and Fun. It's taken me years of pondering to put this newsletter together, but it's taken my daughter Shereen a moment to persuade me to get it done. I hope you like it so here goes... 

This first issue is all about me, where I come from, how I started writing plus all the publications I have been featured in thus far. Over the coming months. I'll be hooking up with a trailer-load of talented writers, artists and entrepreneurs who live around the world and give them the opportunity to voice what they are writing, making, selling, performing, and doing. 

Ok - Why call it Panther Newsletter? - Well back in the day from the mid 1970's through to the mid 1990's, I used to play semi professional basketball for a club Small Heath Panthers, (Photo above; I'm wearing the number 4 shirt). All the team members grew up in the same area; inner-city Small Heath in Birmingham. We went to the same schools, played basketball for the school team, knew each other's families, we were a tight-knit community. After we left school in 1975 and 1976 respectively, in 1977 we decided to form a basketball club to play in the West Midlands Basketball League. We believed it would conquer our boredom of unemployment and give us a sense of purpose. We were a very successful team.

When our coach retired, the search was on for a leader to make sure the club kept going. I didn't ask for the responsibility, perhaps because I was a writer and entertained my friends with stories I wrote when we were at school, maybe because I was always organised; whatever the reason, I naturally led them. I took on the daunting task of Player-Coach, Team Manager and Club Secretary simultaneously. At the start of every season, one of my many duties was to print and issue the club's league fixtures and cup games. However, all the team members (bless dem), were forgetful souls. I soon got fed up of them asking me: "When's the next game Norm, are we playing at home or away?" So to remedy the situation, I created a weekly newsletter called Panther News. In it were the club's league and cup fixtures, what position we were in the league, some of my short-stories, a bit of local news and a black history section which I called 'The Culture Corner' - They loved it and they never asked me when the next game was again. This version of Panther News is dedicated to my Small Heath Panther brethren. We shared a lot of good times travelling up and down the West Midlands County and building a reputation of being one of the most feared and respected basketball clubs in the region; and when we meet up from time to time, we recall those happy days. So to the original Small Heath Panthers Basketball Club, I salute you!


Enjoy!

Read more about Small Heath Panthers Basketball Club; here...
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Greetings: I trust that everything you read in PANTHER NEWSLETTER, you will enjoy, and its contents will tempt you to keep coming back to read more. 


I first launched PANTHER NEWSLETTER, in November 2009. It started out as a hobby with the intention to put in the spotlight local talent, artists, writers, poets in the city of Birmingham, UK where I live, and the surrounding region of the West Midlands County. My focus was mainly on the every day people who are not usually mentioned in the mainstream media. Talented people who work hard at their craft, most of the time unpaid, and strive to make a difference to enhance people's lives; but mainly because they have a passion for what they love doing. I also wanted to create a website/blog, that was engaging, educational, thought-provoking, creative and fun, with community news and cultural history. 

As the months rolled by, through the power of social media and word of mouth PANTHER NEWSLETTER established a global readership. Artists who live in the United States for example began to send me requests asking if they could be featured and interviewed. In return, they informed and directed their family, friends, supporters and followers of the existence of PANTHER NEWSLETTER.

Who am I? 


I am Norman Samuda Smith, the first black British born novelist to be published in the UK; read more about me below.

Norman Samuda Smith
  
Norman Samuda Smith's parents came to England from Jamaica in the early 1950s. He was born in 1958 and spent most of his formative years living and growing up above his mother's hair boutique in the Small Heath area of Birmingham. When Norman discovered his love of writing at the age of ten, he was encouraged and inspired by his mother to read and continue writing; she was his first audience. Norman soon began entertaining his friends with fictional stories. His friends were the  main characters in the stories he wrote about a Birmingham based black football/soccer club; the Caribbean Stars; read how he was inspired to write about them: here...

Trinity Arts Association based in Small Heath published Norman's novel Bad Friday in 1982, it was short-listed for the Young Observer Fiction Prize that year. New Beacon books; London/Port of Spain republished the novel in 1985. In their promotion New Beacon announced: "Bad Friday is the first novel to come out of the black British working class experience; and it confronts in an artistic form, the life of black youth in Britain today."

From the mid 1970s, through to the late 1990s Norman played semi-professional basketball for his local club Small Heath Panthers. During the 1980s he acted with and wrote plays for Ebony Arts Theatre Group of which he was a founder member. His first play One of Those Days was performed by them in 1983, RAM JAM!! (his first commissioned play),1984; Ebony Versions; 1985 and Woman to Woman; 1986 and 1987. Each play had successful national tours in front of packed community audiences.
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WRITING & PUBLICATIONS
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  • IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 30th ANNIVERSARY
  • 2006: Short-story St Ann (A tribute to his late mother Irene Ann Samuda-Smith), published in the anthology The Heart of Our Community;Timeless Avatar Press (USA) 
  • 2006: Poems; Life's a Game and I'm Begging You; published in the anthology Songs of Hope; Timeless Avatar Press (USA)
  • 2006: Short-story Who Can't Hear Must Feel; published in EXTRA EDGE MAGAZINE; a.k.a. RAW EDGE MAGAZINE (Birmingham, UK - Special Edition)
  • 2002: Commissioned to write Short-Story RESPECT by MAC for their STORIES ON STAGE project.
  • 1987: Commissioned to read, write and perform his short-story Rasta Love for BBC Radio 4: Caribbean Drift series.
  • 1986 - 1987: WOMAN TO WOMAN: Play written by Norman Samuda Smith; performed by Ebony Arts Theatre Group: performed nationally.
  • 1985: BAD FRIDAY (The Novel); Republished by New Beacon Books.
  • 1985 to 1987: EBONY VERSIONS: Monologues, Poetry and Comedy Sketches by The Ebony Writer's Posse; performed nationally.
  • 1984: First commissioned play RAM JAM!! written by Norman Samuda Smith; performed and toured nationally by Ebony Arts Theatre Group.
  • 1984: Short-story FIRST LOVE: published in FINGERPRINT 2 by Small Heath Writer's Workshop; Trinity Arts Association.
  • 1983: ONE OF THOSE DAYS (Play): Written for Ebony Arts Theatre Group by Norman Samuda Smith; performed by Ebony Arts Theatre Group.
  • 1983: Short-story THE RAID: published in FINGERPRINT by Small Heath Writer's Workshop; Trinity Arts Association.
  • 1982: Short-story WOMAN: published in HARD LINES MAGAZINE by Small Heath Writer's Workshop; Trinity Arts Association.
  • 1982: BAD FRIDAY (The Novel); Trinity Arts Association. Short-listed for the Young Observer Fiction Prize.
  • 1979: Four part serialized story: Crush and the Mystery Carver; published in SMALL HEATH OPEN EYE NEWSLETTER; Trinity Arts Association.
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ABOUT BAD FRIDAY
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Black British literature was developed in the dance-hall environment. Its dominant feature was dub performance poetry from the early 1970s and into the 1980s, mainly influenced by Jamaican and Black British based sound systems who each boasted 'Toasters', MC's, nowadays called 'Rappers'. Two of the most highly acclaimed 'Toasters' of the 70s and 80s were U Roy (The Godfather of Toasting) and Big Youth who was clearly inspired by Daddy U Roy. Their 'Sing-Jay' style engaged their dance-hall audience, as they voiced their musical poems of the thoughts, topics and opinions which was of concern to the major populous. In England, dub poets such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah and Martin Glynn who were inspired by these Jamaican 'Toasters', clustered their topics around the years of conflict between black British youth and the police. With this and the inspiration of reggae music, through their respected poetry, they celebrated and re-educated a generation of their historical African past.

Trinity Arts Association was a community arts workshop who received financial assistance from West Midlands Arts. They were based in Coventry Road in the heart of Small Heath in Birmingham. Between 1978 and 1982, they had established a reputation for uncovering and encouraging writers in the Small Heath area.

In 1982, Bad Friday was their sixth publication and arguably their best. It was the first and only novel they produced, having in the past concentrated on local history and poetry collections. Bad Friday follows the fortunes of Delroy Bell, a young black school leaver and his friends. His story is set in the mid 1970's during a period of recession and record unemployment and it tells of how each is searching for a future, an identity and the respect they feel was denied their parents.

The periodical Race Today quoted in 1985: "Bad Friday is a promising intervention at the embryonic stage in the emergence of black British literature. The novel is born of the black British experience..."

The Caribbean Times added: "Norman Smith belongs to a new breed of black writers. They are not West Indian but British and black; they may draw up on their Caribbean roots, but the writing is of another time and another place. English literature can only be richer for this transfusion of new blood..."

On April 5th 1982 and ironically the same date in 1985, Norman Samuda Smith was confirmed as the first black British born novelist to be published in the United Kingdom. He used the language of his peers. The dialogue spoken by Bad Friday's characters is a black British patois, a dialect developed in the school playgrounds through the 1960's, into the 1970's and is still evolving as the second and third black British born generation emerge.

It is important to understand and realise that Bad Friday was published a clear decade before X-Press, (now the largest publishers of black fiction in Britain), came through with their first publications.


James Pogson.

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