Deborah Stevenson is Having a Pigeon Party With The Mouthy Poets and John Agard

You are all invited this Saturday.

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.

Sacha Wise and Ingrid Mclaren Collaboration Say Sum Thin 5 At Nottingham Playhouse

New 'Science of Digestion' Poem

Searching For Love... Poem by Sacha Wise

I learnt love from the guy who loved me

I didn't want to be with him

    But still he loved me

I learnt heart break from the guy whom I loved

He didn't want to be with me

    But still I loved him

I learnt hostility from the guy I married

I learnt patience

    But he said he had never loved me

I will stop searching for love in basements

under stairs, in cupboards and on book shelves

Where instead all I find is dust and cobwebs

   and empty space. I will start recognising 

love when I see it and not fall for it's easier, 

uglier sister, who is more like 

a well meaning brother

     I will find you 

Or you will find me

Because like love 

we are meant to be together

I will 

one day 

love you

"Cover Me With Lace Not Bruises" Video Footage From Say Sum Thin 4

Poetry Dies Because A Guy Has Spoken That Word?!

Poetry I knock you out!

Your dead cause I SAY so....

Wrong.

My friend Nathan A Thompson your wrong. 

Basically from what I can see there was a bit of a scandal in the UK poetry scene about two weeks ago when a young spoken word slam artist kind of turned his back on the performance poetry that he actually still teaches young people, through an article in the Independent. 

He declared poetry dead.

Here is the article he wrote, titled, "Poetry Slams Do Nothing To Help The Art Form Survive"...

Read The Original Article Here

I must say I say 'poets united' came out in full force and there were Facebook posts, Twitter tweets and blog posts galore.... where the performance poets fought back with their pens, or laptops, towards something of victory. I saw a tweet that said something along the lines of... 'you don't want to upset a poet as their attack with their pens will be brutal.' That made me chuckle.

I think at this point Nathan Thompson was in the corner surrounded by some angry poets all waving their pens very high to the sky and shouting loudly (after all they are performance poets) until Nathan realised it was getting too dangerous to be silent amidst the LOUD metaphorical disses that were dirtying his otherwise unheard of name.

He posted a response, a kind of justification and kind of acceptance of his wrong... but not really. Check it out:

Interview With Nathan Thompson

From this response, I got he actually does like poetry slams and apparently was attacking the attitude that slam is more authentic because it is underground. Obviously he cannot see the value of slam when he teaches it to young children in schools I presume. Oh but yes but he says he does see the value in slam to inspire young people to write. 

Now I am confused.

Maybe it was something to do with the £100 he was offered to write the piece... I don't know.

All I do know is I have seen many talented and hard-working spoken word artists who put their scars out there in a brave and selfless way. They craft their art and polish their acts to create something which can bring a bearded, butch of a man to tears. 

I know I have seen it. 

The magic they create is the similar to a conversation with a lover who you thought you would never see again and have missed sorely along your path. It's a similar type of aching performance poetry fills.... and longs for that one person to smile, laugh, or be touched in a way that forever changes their path. 

I know I have felt it.

How I Came To LOVE The Spoken Word

I literally have just come back from an inspirational day in London with the Nottingham Mouthy Poets sponsoring my travel and the workshop costs at the Roundhouse in Camden.

First of all, I was very excited when I found out that the workshop I was attending was at the Roundhouse in Camden as I had heard a lot of AMAZING things happening in the London poetry scene with poets who first attended a workshop there for a sturdy foundation to later form collectives such as the Roundhouse Poets http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/explore/portfolios/poetry-collective led by the highly regarded Polarbear, who runs poetry workshops for the youth. Friends have commended his talents of being able to draw out their best poetry by any means necessary.

There is another collective formed called 'Early Doors' due to the Roundhouse's unique ability to bring young, creative people together. It was this collective I first saw when I decided spoken word poetry was the path every part if me wanted to explore. It was my birthday and I had this burning desire to attend a poetry evening with beautiful poetry and red wine (my two favourite passions). So I started searching and found this one event that looked AMAZING! It was called "Come Rhyme with Me" at Cottons Restaurant/Bar in Angel and not only did it fulfil my current wish list, it also threw in tempting rum cocktails and a plate of Caribbean food to get the night swinging in the 'Rhum Jungle' Bar. I am Caribbean, so having rum and food in the mix made it an easy sale for me!

I attended with the event with my expectations high yet my experiences of spoken word low. I had been writing in fierce secrecy for years but I was insanely curious about spoken word. But, in all honesty attending "Come Rhyme with Me" made me break free from insecurities that were keeping my poetry in prison. Something was put in me that literally changed, possibly, the course of my life. I was in silence, shocked for the majority of the performances. When my friends asked how I was I enjoying it, I could only give a dumb, silent nod as the words were already taken and put beautifully into stanzas already.

Even how I came to Mouthy Poets stemmed from that night, as I met a spoken word artist from Roundhouse Poets there who kept in contact with me and encouraged me to share my work. He chatted to his friend who currently attends Mouthy Poets in Nottingham to get the details on my behalf and continued to encourage me to attend, even though I was terrified at the time, I did it. I am doing it. And I will do it. So, let's see what happens from here.