This post is more that just an invite though, it is a review of Deborah Stevenson's new pamphlet called Pigeon Party. She is knows a thing or two about poetry as artistic director/founder of Mouthy Poets and Nottingham University lecturer of Creative Writing.
With all this credentials behind her maybe you would expect her poetry to be stiff and out of touch. Well, in that case you don't know Deborah. She is quite possibly the most animated academic that I know and her poetry reflects grime music, proper English values, Caribbean raves and her East London youth roots.
Deborah cannot be boxed and neither can her poetry, so I won't even try but I would describe reading Deborah's pamphlet as being as energy infused as her on the dance floor. Boy, that woman can dance. She has your brain also moving at pace, completely engrossed in emotive imagery and intensive, urban storytelling.
Quite the Pigeon Party indeed.
I loved the poem Bread Machine Teen. I felt connected to this poem, especially as she mentions the poem being inspired by schoolgirls on the 25 bus. I used to catch that same bus all of the time when I lived near Ilford, so the poem bought back memories of the unripe maturity of these young girls:
'I want a more African bottom.
That's what's missing.A batty a baby could be propped up on.'
And contrasting that with Quality Street where we get a sense of her parent's heritage:
'Small metal buckets filled with chips proper. Hot and English. Windy cheese and onion cobs sea-wet and salt-dry. Tinned mushy pea sky...'
Her writing style is sophisticated beyond her years. I felt like reading Deborah's pamphlet allowed me to get to know her personal side deeper with Should You Raise Him in the Hood:
'My first son will have dreadlocks
the shade of wheat sheaves -
stockier than his school blazer
by the time he is fourteen.'
Having worked with Deborah previously I am fully aware how she mulls over every word meticulously to create this uninhibited flow of imagination within the reader's mind. You need to buy and read her pamphlet over and over again to uncover the layers of her personality.
You can't get all of her from a 29 page pamphlet either, you need to see her perform her work. She brings her poetry to life with an expressive face, a captivating pitch, raw unfiltered passion for words and she does actual poems with dancing. Quite a talent!
So come and see her perform this Saturday and the team of Mouthy Poets that are more like a poetic army slowing taking over the world (we currently have taken over Germany with Loewenmouthy!)
We are at the Nottingham Playhouse all day so come and join in with the poetic madness. And make sure you tell Deborah a special thank you for being her bulldozer-self and setting up Mouthy Poets so the rest of us can blossom creatively and so we can have an opportunity to be in hushed silence listening to young people slowly blossom on stage in front of us.
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