I started Door-to-Door Poetry in 2015 in Newcastle upon Tyne. From 2019 to 2020, I secured Arts Council funding to take the concept to 12 places across England. In this time, I spoke to hundreds of people and wrote a total of 64 poems.

If this is the first time you’ve ever heard about this, I imagine you’ve probably got some questions. But I’m going to conveniently skirt around those for now, because I want to focus the subject of this blog post on the technical side of the process; on the way going door-to-door has affected my writing and the lessons it has taught me about making meaningful poetry.

Because there is an attitude, seldom uttered but ever-present, that writing poetry for other people is cheap- that it is more noble and righteous to only ever write poetry for yourself. Like many of us, I have been guilty of viewing commissions as the work that ‘needs’ to happen, so as to allow me the time and space to make my ‘real’ poetry at a later date.

But I have learned through being a Door-to-Door Poet that there are many benefits to embracing the process of writing for others, ones that go much further and deeper than the scope of this one project. I want to argue here that, through meeting strangers and writing for them, there are a lot of useful skills we can develop and a lot of valuable insights we can make, experiences which broaden our perspective and help us to become more fully-rounded writers.

The first and most obvious benefit of writing poems for other people is that you learn a lot. When you start knocking on strangers’ doors and asking what’s important to them, you very quickly become acquainted with the magnitude of your own ignorance. On my first few outings as a Door-to-Door Poet, I met a surfing enthusiast, a highly unconventional doctor, a bonsai tree expert and a judo champion. Whether it was a discipline, a skill, an emotion, or a life experience, everyone I spoke to had their own specialist subject. It was usually something I knew very little about.

I came to appreciate that this was a very spontaneous way of forcing myself to be more curious. One of the most rewarding examples of this was meeting a man called Sami in the west end of Newcastle. He asked for a poem about Islam. Not knowing very much about the subject, I decided to visit a mosque for the first time in my life. I had a fascinating conversation with the local Imam there, who spoke about the relationship between poetry and the Quran. I came to really enjoy the little rabbit holes this project could lead me down. It was a reminder that everything, if we view it properly, is an opportunity to learn and to grow.

But before we can really learn anything, we need to know where to find it. And the second insight I gained from writing for lots of other people is that it makes you a better listener. Assembling poems on my own, my default setting up till this point had often been to try to persuade the reader, to cajole them into seeing the world through my eyes.As the Door-to-Door Poetry project took shape, it became clear that this wasn’t about persuading anyone, or trying to demonstrate how clever I was. It was about listening and holding the space until I found an earnest moment of connection.

It’s amazing where this can take you. One woman in Bensham, near Gateshead, originally told me she had ‘nothing interesting to talk about’. She went on to detail the story of how she single-handedly rescued her entire family from a housefire, carrying both of her children, one on each shoulder, before running back in to drag her unconscious husband from the flames. Later, in Moss Side – Manchester, a man who asked to be referred to as The Specialist started off by talking about the architecture of council estates. He ended up comparing me to an 18^th century time traveller and asking for a poem about that. None of these conversations would have happened if I had entered the process with any objective. Whether we are writing for ourself or for others, we can always benefit from taking the time to listen more closely.

The third, and perhaps the most memorable, lesson I have gained from Door-to-Door Poetry is that every poem is a collaboration. As time went on, I came to see that the conversations I was having, and the resulting poems that came out of them, existed as part of a partnership. On the most basic level, these poems could not have been written without both me and the person on the doorstep. In every encounter, we were working together, brainstorming and sketching out ideas in a short but meaningful relationship.

But the more I experimented with this way of thinking, the more I came to see that this isn’t just about Door-to-Door Poetry. The fact of the matter is, whether we choose to accept it or not, every poem is a collaboration: Between your current self and your past self. Between you and the subject you are observing. Later, between you and an editor, or a proofreader, or a reader. At any given stage, if we look close enough, we can see that what we are making cannot happen without some degree of interdependence.

This might seem like a simple idea, but embracing it can have a profound effect on your approach. The spotlight is shifted from the ego. Writing is no longer about ‘my thoughts, my idea, my poem’. It is about us. Our shared experience. Our feelings. Our lives. It is, I believe, an example of what the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh called the state of ‘interbeing’- the idea that none of us exist in isolation, that we are always in a relationship with everything around us. 

Writing for other people doesn’t have to happen on a doorstep. It can take place on a bus, in a café, in the workplace or at home. Wherever it is happening, it can pass on very valuable skills for us as writers. As we begin to listen more closely and to put the idea of collaboration into practice, we can move away from lecturing, or excessive erudition. We can move instead towards a desire to make a genuine connection in our work, to express ourselves in a way which is inclusive and engaging. The resulting poetry is, in my experience at least, all the better for it.

About Rowan McCabe

Rowan McCabe is a poet and performer who has written for Channel 4, BBC Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ and the National Trust. His work has been featured in the Guardian and on BBC Breakfast. He has toured across the UK and has appeared at Glastonbury Festival and the Royal Albert Hall. Rowan’s first full-length book, The Door-to-Door Poet, was published by Eye Books in September 2025.

www.rowanthepoet.co.uk 

buy the book

Authentic
Bubbly
Positive

What inspires you?

Cool, creative people. I take inspiration from everything and everyone but I find myself being
more inspired by the cool creatives I know, see or come across.

Tell us about your worst ever gig?

Hosting a corporate event with a scarce audience. It’s always difficult when you are faced with hosting a space for people in a corporate setting with low numbers and things/agenda/schedules don’t go to plan. It’s a real test to pull off something amazing in the midst of chaos and make it work as best as you can.

What’s your number one poetry pet peeve?

Performers that completely disregard open mic slot timings (e.g. A 3 minute open mic slot
turns into a 10 minute performance) as a pet peeve of mine.

Whose words do you love at the moment?

Big Scoop
Rae Zoe

What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

Everything will work itself out. Trust and have faith and KEEP AT IT!

If you could be fluent in a language you do not know, what would it be and why?

Spanish – I’ve always admired the language and can even speak very basic but I would love to
revisit it and learn a lot more!

about Ellis Witter

I’m an Actor, Writer, Producer, Model, Author, Poet, Presenter and overall creative who has
starred in projects like ‘Amani’ ‘Sick (Mental Health Short Film, Reggie Yates’s ‘Make Me
Famous’ as well as an NCS Advert entitled ‘No We Can!’. I am also an experienced presenter with experience hosting award shows, corporate events, master of ceremonies, podcasting, talk shows, live/street Interviews & various social media clips garnering millions of views. I am also co-publishing a book and co-directing a theatre play both called ‘Stories Boys Don’t Like To Tell’ which is a collective of deep insightful stories that positively address numerous traumatic events and how we have dealt with/overcome them, premiering a 15 minute show at Theatre Peckham on October 12th for their ‘Young, Black & Gifted’ Scratch Night Showcase. Lastly, I have self-published 2 poetry books, “Deeper Insights” – A collection of expressed feelings and nurtured articulations of a young male’s feelings & “Serenading Seasons” – Lover Boy’s Don’t Die, both available to purchase worldwide on Amazon

Insta: @kingellisw

I was looking forward to working with The Onoma Circle, a collective of poets and artists I’d set up during my first residency. I was looking forward to meeting Phil, a skilled bronze caster, whose family had served the kings of Benin for over 6 generations. I was looking forward to hosting two events I curate: Redacted (a black-out poetry event) and The R.A.P Party (a poetry and music event). I was looking forward to eating my weight in Nigerian food, and soaking my skin in Vitamin D. I was looking forward to to an extremely busy week discussing literary and visual arts, and above all, so seeing ‘Nigeria Imaginary: Homecoming’ – the Museum’s first exhibition.

In 1897, Britain invaded, destroyed most of Benin City and looted most of its stores and altars. Outside Nigeria, the city is synonymous with this tale of plunder and colonial violence. But for me, it city holds a simple filial softness. It is where my father grew up, where my people are from, one of few corners of the world I can partially call home. I was looking forward to playing in my father’s city, on my motherland.

From the tiny airport in Benin, I was planning to go directly to the Museum Of West African Art (MOWAA) when I received a text. From a friend at the museum, the text simply told me not to come. That it wasn’t safe. Roughly 40 protesters had stormed the museum chanting their allegiance to the traditional ruler of Edo State, the Oba of Benin. The protesters had robbed and beaten up merchandise sellers, thrown tables and chairs across the premises, insulted guests, donors, artists and ambassadors who had flown in from across the world. Standing at the airport, I felt a number of things: shock, surprise, horror and deep embarrassment. But in the weeks after, as the dust settled, I learnt that all this had been a long time coming. 

The tens of thousands of items looted from Benin in 1897 were scattered across numerous museums and private collections in Europe and the Americas. Some stayed stationary, behind closed doors, encased in glass. Some were installed proudly outside buildings as if talismans of British conquests. Some were shipped from exhibition to exhibition as colonial-era curiosities. Some were even shown in museums on African soil, but never in Nigeria, and never in Benin. Some exchanged hands for hefty sums at auctions, and all the while, the Oba and the people of Benin watched, insulted, as their cries for justice and restitution were ignored, and their treasures toured the world.

Eventually, the Republic of Nigeria threw its weight behind the Oba, and united, began calling for all that was stolen to be returned. As their voices grew louder and began to gain traction outside of the country, within the country, there were disputes over whom they should be returned to. The Nigerian government argued the items belonged to the republic, to the people of Nigeria as whole. But the Oba believed they belonged to his kingdom, his family, to him personally, and wanted the treasures placed within his palace grounds. This clash between modernity and tradition, between the republic and the kingdom, halted attempts at restitution, a stalemate that meant western institutions could keep the loot for longer. The dispute brewed and boiled for so long, that even after the Nigerian Government stepped back and announced the Oba as the true custodian of all that was stolen in 1897, the atmosphere remained charged, as if a storm cloud, dark and ever ready to burst.

And this is what I waded into, pen in hand, foot in mouth, asking questions that poked at the clouds, searching for answers to spark poetry as the protesters attacked and shut down the exhibition.

John Keats once descried poets as the ‘midwives of reality’, the suggesting being that we pull ideas from what MIGHT BE into what IS. So, perhaps on some subconscious clairvoyant level, I tapped into what would unfold weeks later, because during my first residency, I didn’t ask the poetry collective to write about MOWAA. Instead I asked them to write, imagining their OWN museums.. 

But what is a poem if not a glass case? Isn’t a collection a small museum? What is a memory if not a looted item? Aren’t many books in scattered collections? Many stationary, behind closed doors? Or showcased proudly, as if talismans of conquests? Aren’t rare editions exchanged for hefty sums at auctions? I asked the collective what they would preserve in their museum, who they would invite to their opening, to imagine a visitor and to ask them questions. Below are some lines taking from their poems:

Elvis Ehimen Izamase:
In this museum’s heart, do you find the key
To understanding the essence of a legacy?

Eghonghon Grace Imuetinyan:
Don’t you think stories
Are gateways to histories?

Tracy Ohovwore:
Aren’t you a pawn of the white man? 
Didn’t you trade the comfort of your tradition?

Benita Oseremi Obajuobalo:
Did you feel how culture sits on the tongue—
heavy, sweet, untranslatable?

Efetobore Michelle:
Did it sound melodious, or was it discordant?
Did it expose the conflict in my identity?

Joseph Omoh Ndukwu:
Do you then ask why I have built you this place
On the edge of a city that fell to foreign powers? 

As I write this, MOWAA is closed, and will remain so for an indefinite period. Despite all that happened, my relationship with The Onoma Circle is blossoming. I secured a huge commission for them from the Ethnographic Museum of Zurich, Switzerland. They have items from Benin they will repatriate this year. And my collective are  currently writing poems for each one. 

My next collection, titled ‘Of All The Boys’ will feature many poems about my trip to Benin, and many of them try to encase what haunts me still: the stuff of storm clouds – a shifting mist of questions.

Inua Ellams
FRSL, FRSA.

About Inua Ellams

Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates live literature and music, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates poetry and film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins & Bloomsbury.

The LeftLion Literature Editor at the time, James Walker, handed me a commission to review a show by a spoken word collective called Mouthy Poets. I’d never heard of them, but I was hungry for anything and everything. Secretly, I’d already been scribbling away for years – poems on receipt paper during bar shifts, scraps of verse in staff rooms, email rap battles with telesales colleagues. I’d even dragged a mate to an open mic at Hotel Deux and nervously read out some lines of my own. So when this gig came up, I was intrigued.

That night, twenty-odd poets took turns stepping up to the mic, weaving in and out of each other’s work. Hip-hop beats stitched the evening together, with a flow of poetry that was equal parts raw, playful, and polished. The space buzzed. The words felt alive. At the end, a curly-haired woman in baggy jeans and trainers bounded onto the stage with a clipboard, inviting people to get involved with the collective. Her name was Debris Stevenson, the founder of Mouthy Poets and, though I didn’t know it yet, the person who would help to shape the next decade of my career.

Discovering the Collective

Friday evenings soon became sacred. I joined the collective, notebook in hand, free-writing in circles of poets who encouraged risk-taking and imperfection. We stood up, tried new voices, shared freshly written work on the spot. We mapped out showcases on giant sheets of paper, scrawling with Sharpies, testing out collaborations, making mistakes, laughing, and, without realising it, building friendships.

Mouthy didn’t just teach us to write; it taught us how to craft. We workshopped rigorously, giving and receiving feedback. We experimented with form and performance, exploring how movement, props, sound, and lighting could elevate a poem. We learned to think not only as writers, but as producers and educators.

And then came the visitors. Giants of the poetry world, Roger Robinson, Malika Booker, Hannah Silva, Dean Atta, Patricia Smith, Caroline Bird, who ran masterclasses, retreats, and workshops. We shared stages with them, exchanged ideas, and felt the impossible become possible.

One year, through a cultural exchange programme, we travelled to Karlsruhe, Germany, to collaborate with our sister collective, Löwenmaul (Lion Mouth). We wrote poems, took contemporary dance workshops, and swapped stories late into the night. Later, they came to Nottingham. It felt like poetry could take you anywhere.

From Mouthy to GOBS

As Mouthy alumni, many of us carried the torch. Some launched performance nights, others became Young Poet Laureates, festival organisers, or workshop leaders. I myself started being invited to perform and facilitate. For the first time, poetry wasn’t just a hobby, it was a vocation.

But collectives, like people, have lifespans. After a few luminous years, Mouthy disbanded. The scene, once electric, simmered down. By then I was Editor at LeftLion, my energy poured into producing a monthly magazine. Still, the seed had been planted. During an interview for a Writer-in-Residence role at Nottingham Trent University, I mentioned my dream of starting a new collective. Sandeep Mahal, then Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, lit up at the idea. To my amazement, I got the role. When the residency was over, NTU provided start-up funding for the beginnings of GOBS Collective.

Side-by-side with the brilliant Ioney Smallhorne, supported and mentored by John Berkavitch, I launched a five-week education programme: recruiting new members, learning together about poetry, creating an anthology, and building towards a performance showcase. We managed two in-person sessions before the world shifted into lockdown. Suddenly, we were running everything online: writing workshops, rehearsals, feedback sessions. Later, we ran a second online cohort and eventually produced our first live showcases: Full Moon and Earth.

We’ve been lucky to have regular support from Apples and Snakes, who haven’t only provided funding but also advice, encouragement, and moral support. Their belief in us has helped GOBS grow into a sustainable, long-term presence in the city’s cultural landscape.

Finding Sustainability

Over time, we learned the importance of building a ‘spine’ of activity: the minimum heartbeat of the collective that could continue even without funding. That spine became four seasonal events, ranging from cosy winter pub socials to outdoor summer workshops, anchoring us through the year and celebrating the cyclical changes in nature. Around them, we could build more ambitious projects if energy and funding allowed.

In creating sustainability, I’ve discovered the importance of considering how a collective can feed into individual creative practice. Ioney and I launched GOBS Poetry Book Club. It started as a way to finally tackle the unread stacks of poetry collections on our shelves, but quickly became a communal ritual. We met in venues like Mimm Studios, Broadway Cinema, and eventually found a home in Nottingham Central Library. We read aloud, discuss, debate, and write new work inspired by the month’s book.

Then grew another experiment: GOBS Sunrise Sessions. I’d always dreamed of being an early riser, catching the quiet magic of dawn, but never managed it alone. So I set up a regular Zoom space: I had to open the room, so I had to get up. Together, we breathe, stretch, free-write, and set intentions in rhythm with the moon cycle. It’s become not just a practice for me, but a shared ritual supported by GOBS member Sarah Wheatley, and an accountability anchor that links personal growth to communal creativity.

The rhythm of community

Running GOBS has taught me as much about sustainability as it has about poetry. Collectives thrive on energy, but energy alone isn’t enough, they need rhythm. A balance of push and pause. A structure that can withstand burnout and shifting circumstances.

For me, the rhythm of GOBS now echoes the rhythms of life and nature: seasonal events, lunar cycles, the daily rising of the sun. These rhythms don’t just sustain the collective; they sustain me. They remind me that poetry isn’t only about performance or output; it’s about presence, breath, and connection.

Because ultimately, GOBS isn’t just about poetry. It’s about creating a sustainable space where voices can emerge, collide, and resonate. A space that gives what Mouthy Poets once gave me: not just words, but the courage to use them.

Moving forwards after an incredible 2025

​​This past year – our fifth year – has felt like a gentle widening of the circle. We’ve taken GOBS into new spaces, running workshops with a youth centre, a school, and a local charity supporting people with brain injuries. We’ve worked closely with Shadow Poets in this, creating space for others to learn how to deliver work, to hold space, and to build confidence doing so. We’ve also spent time sharing skills within the collective, running masterclasses in workshop facilitation and event hosting, so that the skills, energy and responsibility don’t sit with one person alone.

One of the real highlights was spending time together at Arvon: sixteen of us eating, walking, writing, dancing, and learning in the countryside alongside Anthony Anaxagorou and Vanessa Kisuule. Following that, publishing masterclasses with Bad Betty Press. All of which fed directly into Constellation, a performance showcase where sixteen individual poetry pamphlets were launched at Waterstones Nottingham. None of this would have happened without the care and encouragement of Apples and Snakes.

As we look ahead, we’re trying to loosen our grip a little by reshuffling our organisational structure. We want to let the Collective lead itself more fully, to share power, trust the group, and allow things to grow in unexpected directions. We want to tend to the partnerships we already have, and slowly reach outwards too, perhaps towards other collectives across the UK, and maybe beyond, learning from each other, swapping stories, seeing what might be possible together.

In January 2026, GOBS will come together to reflect on the year that’s just passed and to imagine what comes next: we’ve been gathering and holding onto the ideas we’ve heard from our members, and are ready to play. We’re stepping into the next year with curiosity, compassion, and a shared intention to keep wellbeing at the heart of everything we do. It’s a tricky thing to build sustainability in the current climate, but we’ve now created a community that I’m sure will grow into pathways we can’t even imagine yet.

Follow: gobscollective.org

About Bridie

Bridie Squires is a writer, performance artist and producer from Nottingham. Founder and Director of GOBS Collective, her work spans across poetry, playwriting and journalism, and has been featured by BBC Radio 4, BBC Sounds and LeftLion Magazine. She has performed alongside Holly McNish, Lemn Sissay and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and has appeared at We Out Here festival. Her debut collection Duck on Bike was self-published in 2023 and her one-woman shows Casino Zero and Chaos Casino premiered at Nottingham Playhouse in 2023 and 2025 respectively.

Follow: bridiesquires.com | @brizzaling

Hey

It’s that time of year when we do a ‘quick’ round-up of all things Apples!! 

Big news for 2025 saw us going back to our roots and reclaiming the idea of performance poetry being what we are all about. Exciting times ahead!

As ever, we delivered loads of amazing work with a brilliant range of partner organisations and fabulous poets, with work happening everywhere from Bristol to Birmingham to Bradford. We worked in schools, libraries, at festivals, venues big and small, online and from a converted horsebox (Ivy).

Supporting and developing performance poets across the country is at the heart of what we do. For example, this year Associate Artistic Director Ty’rone worked with Coventry based poets and Belgrade Theatre on Playing Poetry.

“Playing Poetry is a talent development project all about exploration and play in performance poetry; how to make poetry pop and come alive on stage. This year saw ​​four emerging performance poets from Coventry work with four nationally established performance poets over the course of four weekends. The focus was on performance techniques, stage craft, movement, voice work, embodiment of the work etc. The poets worked with Miss Yankey, Jasmine Gardosi, Bradley Taylor and John Bernard. Resulting in a showcase to a sold out audience at Coventry Belgrade Theatre’s ‘See It First Festival’”

In 2025 we also delivered:

• Words A Stage 2.0 for early career poets, a series of online workshops and a week-long residential at Arvon
• Artists’ Retreats, bringing poets together to recharge, build connections and develop skills
• Scratch Lab with early-career poets in South London experimenting with group performances
• Online workshops to push craft and build community
• Enfield Young Producers – a Poet in The City programme upskilling the next generation of producers

…and supported UniSlam and Gobs Collective in Nottingham with their artist development programmes.

We launched ON:LINE our new winter masterclass series which runs until Feb 2026, still time to join: Book here!

Our podcast went visual! You can watch it here via our Youtube channel and we continued our partnership with the students at Elstree Screen Arts with more Blackbox.

We were delighted to be a partner with the Wandsworth, London Borough of Culture programme delivering a project in 10 primary schools to 300 Year 5 children as well as another 1200 children and teachers who attended. Our live SPIN performances were also part of the Schools Poetry Festival.

WORDCRAFT, our poet-in-residence programme in Ealing, came to a close – with teachers, children and poets all saying what a great project it had been.

“It was kind of magical, that memory is going to last my whole lifetime” – Year 6 Participant, Dairy Meadow Primary School, Southall

Libraries continued to be one of our favourite places to hang out. Our Saturday morning programme Telling Tales taking place as part of our Libraries Out Loud programme supported by John Lyons Charity.  In August, our Library Takeover project saw young people devise and produce an event with Brent Library Services.

We said a fond farewell to PLOT17, our hip-hop eco-show for children, which came to an end in 2025. For over 4 years it was on the road, delivering 77 shows in 12 locations, reaching over 7000 children and families. Ivy, our converted horsebox van is now off to new adventures!

And finally, keep a lookout for our announcement about our legendary night Jawdance, which, after 15 years at Rich Mix, is heading to a new home in Spring 2026!!  

I’ll end with a heartfelt thanks to all our funders and partner organisations:

ACE, John Lyons Charity, The Fenton Arts Trust, London Borough Of Wandsworth, London Boroughs of Wandsworth, Camden, Ealing, Brent, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster & Harrow, Arvon, Rich Mix,  Belgrade Theatre, Mason & Fifth, Lyra Festival, Gobs Collective, Unislam, Young Identity, Birmingham City University, Ealing Learning Partnership, Lewisham Looked After Children Services, Stanley Arts, The Albany, Elstree Screen Arts, Fire and Dust and the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival.

And extra thanks and love to:

• All the amazing poets that we have the privilege to work with 
• Our fabulous trustees who give up their time and expertise to support the organisation so brilliantly
• Binita, Annie & Secoura @ The Space inBetween 
• Ahmed & Anthony @ D237 
• The Apples and Snakes team: Ben, Daniela, Iman, Janet, Marcelle, Mark, Natalie, Rob, Robert, Russell, Sarah, Ty’rone & Yelena for being awesome 

With love,

Lisa 

Using multiple artforms to engage young people with Care Experience.

I’d love to say my arts practice was forged in fire. It sounds good, doesn’t it?  It makes my arts practice sound tough. It’s not tough (is anyones?) but it is resilient.  

My creative journey began in metal bands, rehearsing in barns and organising gigs in village halls where brutal sludge acts performed under tapestries of saints, and amplifiers were stored in the pantry between sets. I then ended up in Brighton, where I was absorbed into a healthy hip hop scene, having been drawn over to the lyrical side by Dizzee Rascal and Roots Manuva. This involved lots of freestyle, and lots of battling. It was chaotic, unpredictable, and required a thick skin. And then I found poetry, where the chaos was lyrical, but not confrontational. Where audiences really listened and the variety of voices from the stage was inspiring.  

When I emerged on the poetry circuit, I was lucky enough to find myself working with Lewisham Children’s Services and Apples and Snakes, working with Care Experienced young people on a project called  Write Speak Feel. The sessions were chaotic, dynamic and full of warmth. We produced poems, songs and wrote a book. After the project I was honoured to return to host a number of award ceremonies and saw young participants grow into confident and articulate adults. 

My work with Care Experienced young people continued with Lewisham,  Virtual School, The Fostering Network, and in 2019 I established an interdisciplinary arts program, The Nest.  

The Nest program was designed alongside participants, and brought in artists from all mediums to collaborate with a group of Care Experienced young people. We had drummers, filmmakers, jewellery designers,  photographers, charcoal artists, painters, and everything in between. It was brilliant, and it was chaotic. We managed to maintain a sense of consistency with a solid team of facilitators and a single, cabin-compatible suitcase: ‘The  Suitcase of Dreams’. This was a suitcase brimming with art materials that we installed as an alternative to a breakout space. We situated The Suitcase of  Dreams just out of the way of the main workshop and if a participant needed some time to themselves, they could go to the suitcase and create freely.  ‘The Suitcase of Dreams’ allowed our participants to self-regulate without leaving the workshop space. Whether they returned to the main activity or not, they stayed with the session and created something the group could celebrate.  

When we expanded to set up cohorts in Bristol and Newcastle, the suitcase became a prerequisite to any Nest session.  

Outside of The Nest, I was regularly delivering creative writing workshops for young people with organisations including Apples and Snakes. One writing residency found me working with a group with a variety of needs, which I was struggling to meet with traditional techniques. I observed that certain participants were displaying adverse responses towards the act of writing; At the moment of putting pen to paper, it would kick off. I needed a new approach.  

In this particular group, there was a high percentage of Care Experienced students managing low literacy levels that are common with interrupted education and high levels of trauma. I realised that many of the students had complex relationships to their handwriting, or spelling, or met insurmountable difficulty shaping words on a page, or even a laptop. Drawing on my experience with The Nest, I began exploring new approaches to creative writing. I developed simple art exercises that I could direct with poetry prompts. I found visual art tasks that I could interrogate to create poems. I started to incorporate these new approaches and found students were less explosive, more engaged; it was working.  

The new interdisciplinary approaches sidestepped the potentially triggering act of writing and allowed a more embodied engagement with creativity.  

I saw an opportunity. Through my relationship with Lewisham CICC,  Apples and Snakes, and The Fostering Network, I had seen how challenging it can be to access young peoples’ thoughts around experiences of care. My idea was that by using these interdisciplinary techniques we can take a  trauma-informed approach to discussing difficult life experiences. I approached Apples and Lewisham and they were up for a tentative experiment. We began with an open poetry-and-painting project with the awesome Keeler Tornero, which gamified abstract painting and encouraged participants to dance on their canvases! And once we’d had some success with the approach, we ran a zine-making workshop in collaboration with brilliant zine artist, Liz Bell, exploring participants’ thoughts and ideas around being in care. It was a gorgeous session, characterised by warmth and unpredictability. And when the group came together at the end of the workshop, we were able to have gentle and insightful conversations. Participants’ thinking had already taken place in the creative process, and so we could enquire about the art, not the young person’s potentially traumatic life experiences.  

I used to wonder how I ended up working so regularly with Care Experienced young people. For a while I attributed my path to the rap skills that were so useful in engaging high-energy boys in literary devices. But upon reflection, I think there was something about resilience, and comfort in chaos, that served me better than even my GOAT-level rap abilities. Chaos can be overwhelming, but there is so much space for everyone within it. It allows for all ideas to be included. And there is something in these new approaches, combining embodied arts practices and poetry, that leans into this chaos, draws it in and harnesses its energy to ensure everyone feels like they can belong. 

Adam kammerling

Adam Kammerling is an award winning poet, theatre maker and educator.

His most recent works include Seder, his debut poetry collection which was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Awards, Shall We Take This Outside, a three-person spoken-word/dance theatre show that toured nationally, and Inside!, a piece of poetry/rave theatre commissioned by Centrepoint and the Saatchi Gallery.

A highly experienced educator, he has created spoken word and theatre with emerging poets, musicians and circus practitioners at the Roundhouse, The Albany and Pentonville Prison.

Insta: @adam_kammerling

Since my time with Apples and Snakes at Acts of Imagination, The Power of Art to Create A Better World, I’ve been thinking about how poetry can help us listen better, and how art affirms that we are all connected.

The show began with a performance by musician Tainara Takua. Within her set, Tainara spoke    about her indigenous Guarani Mbya background and the themes of nature, children and water woven within the lyrics of the songs she performed. I could not understand any of the words she sung, but I felt them. I could hear the river. I could see the children playing in the breeze. 

Qadir Jhatial, an artist from Pakistan, took a seat at the long table on stage. After an exercise where the audience was asked to close their eyes and imagine a future where the land is respected and thriving together with communities, Qadir began to speak. He let the audience know that he would be speaking in the Sindhi language. There was no translation, and again I did not understand a word he spoke, but I could feel each one. His hands moved like waves as he spoke, painting in the air.

The conversation continued to flow. Another person came to the stage and this time they spoke in Portuguese without translation. I was seated at the table at this time. I shared that hearing this communication between different languages made me think of something that often comes into my head, which is that nature also has a language. I explained that when I was in Barbados in the last year, where my family is from, there was a moment when I felt like I could hear the birds clearer and the clouds felt closer. Sitting by the Caribbean Sea, it felt like the turquoise waters knew me. It felt like returning to see relatives who said ‘wow, you’ve grown’. The ocean did not speak with words but I felt that sense of kin when I sat listening to the tides. Amber Massie-Blomfield, the host, asked how we re-develop our ability to listen to nature and the person speaking in Portuguese replied with words that will stay with me. She said that it is not only about listening to who and what we understand, but listening when we do not understand.

Another person in the audience, who said she was from Pakistan, came to sit at the table. She spoke in English and told the story of a tree being cut down from outside of her office window. It looked like she was moved to the brink of tears telling the story of how she tried to save the tree and the grief she feels for her loss. Not just the loss of the tree but all of the various life forms which that one tree supported. 

To listen to nature is to listen to what we might not understand. We know the name of a bird and their properties but does that mean we know that particular bird? Eco-poetry, similar to folktales, feels like a way of reminding myself that the bird also has an inner life, just like me. Even if some may think that is very woo woo, we can all do with making everyday life feel more magical.

Paying attention is something that has become more difficult with all of the ways we can distract ourselves. To hear a bird and to listen to a bird are two different things. I unconsciously hear birds throughout the day, but when I consciously take in the sunset, it feels like I am really listening to the birds. Although I do not know what they are communicating to each other, in choosing to still listen, there is a compassion that I feel towards those birds’ lives. 

This is also true with our fellow human beings. Each person in that room had a story of their relationship to nature. When the people around the table communicated with each other in different languages, it did not feel like each one was listening in order to reply. It felt like we were all listening to listen and respect all of the voices. I believe that when we come together in this way, with our many backgrounds and walks of life, being willing to listen even when we do not initially understand, we can collaborate creatively, and find unique ways of working together, just like nature. This reminds me of a time when I collaborated with another poet to write a piece. Our styles of poetry felt like two completely different languages although we both wrote in English, but by working together we created a very powerful poem. Each of the other poets who came on stage at Acts of Imagination (Anneliese Amoah, Bhumika Billa, Eileen Gbagbo) also have their unique voice and styles, and all of our words wove together like different threads of a tapestry in the audience’s minds.

Consider, I used to think that writing poetry was a way for me to be understood. It was a way for me to say everything I wanted to say, ordering the words how I felt was best and even being able to use poetic devices like rhyme and rhythm to place more emphasis in different places. Now though, I think poetry is making me feel comfortable with not being understood straight away. I can write one poem and each person in the room can come up with their own meaning for it, even if I did not write it in the most abstract way. At the same time, each person who feels connected to the poem, feels that way because something within the poem connected to some part of them. This is similar to compassion and it is why I see poetry as a way to make people feel more connected and compassionate towards other people and the world around us, even with lives that seem very different to our own.

Poetry can seem like a very solitary process when we are writing on our own, but actually poetry is very much about our co-existence and being in relationship with one another. Listening beyond the words, relating beyond understanding and not understanding. Through compassion, which requires an opening heart and mind, I believe we will also have more capacity to understand one another.

So much of life is to do with being in relationship. We are always in relationship, not only if we are in a romantic relationship. As well as family, friends, communities and coworkers, we are also in relationship with nature, whether we are aware of this or not. Being conscious of our relationship with the nature around us isn’t just about understanding our impact on the environment (although that is important). It’s also about the sense of belonging that comes from this awareness. One of my favourite books I’ve read in the last few years is ‘Unearthed’ by Claire Ratinon. Claire shares with us that though there are many things in life that tell us we do not belong, the land wants to be relationship with us. Whether it’s mainstream media and headlines, hate crimes, faceless people on social media, policies and scandals, institutional discrimination, or bullying, nature always affirms to us that no matter who we are, on whatever land we are on, we are worthy of feeling like we belong. Living in the inner city, I’ve found that finding some way of relating to nature can really help with this sense of connection. I know that with soaring train prices, it’s hard for some of us to go to the countryside or explore different parts of the country. Often times urban nature can be overlooked, but instagram pages like @outsidewithlira remind us to look up and see the joy of the birds, to look out for the fluttering butterflies, and to keep our senses open to little moments of natural awe. This is a practice that can really help us with making wonder, joy and belonging a rhythm in life rather than something that we have to wait for. Community garden groups, nature walk events and composting workshops are also great ways to meet new people in a meaningful way. Loneliness is experienced by many people today, in cities too, and so we know that it is not just about not having people around us. Even though we live in a world that on the surface is more connected than ever before, the amount of loneliness suggests a deeper crisis of disconnection, further impacted by the closing of many third spaces (places other than home and work where people can gather and build their own sense of community).

I left Acts of Imagination feeling that eco poetry and any art form that explores our connection to each other and the environment, is a reminder that no matter how many things try to break us apart, we are all parts of this one great ecosystem. After the poems, the songs, the art, and the theatre, we must continue to listen, pay attention and act from this place of connectedness if we are going to each play our role in transforming the challenges and suffering we encounter in our more immediate communities, and in the wider world around us.

About Adjei Sun

Adjei Sun is a poet, artist, performer and facilitator. Themes of his work include nature, identity and mental health. Adjei has performed and spoken nationally and internationally including for Ted X, BBC World Questions, The World Expo and The Natural History Museum. Adjei has formerly been recognised as a BBC 1Xtra Future Figure for his work in communities using poetry and creativity to bring people together and uplift youth voices through his work in schools and communities

Poet Anthony Anaxagorou explores his approach to poetic inspiration, embracing the confused, vulnerable, and the ordinary.

I’m inspired by the things I don’t really understand. There’s a common misconception that poetry is born out of some grand epiphanic moment. As if the poet sits down for twenty minutes, opens their Moleskine and begins to dispense with some of the most profound and tantalising verse known to humankind. Personally, I’ve never experienced such a thing. I tend to take months, years, to see where my impulses want to take me, and from there try to develop the ideas into something new and cohesive. I hate the thought of repeating myself in books, or overidentifying with a subject that readers or the market expect me to always write about. 

The moment I start to work on anything, I begin with a series of questions. Sometimes I know the answer, one which happens to be so infuriating or troubling that I want the reader to somehow find their way into that question’s malaise. I don’t want to give the answer away, but instead build a container that can house the question, so another is free to inhabit it. 

I have a fascination with the mundane, which is where most of us will spend the majority of our lives in. I find that the interplay between ordinary moments set against the complexities of social structures and theory make for rich poetic ground. 

The poems I chose for the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation and WritersMosaic collaborative poetry short film series, UK Global Majority Poets on Film 2025, deal with ordinary, everyday themes. For the series, I read and turned into films my own poem, Things Already Lost, and Larry Levis’ After the Blue Note Closes – a poem which has had a profound influence on my work. Both poems deal with similar ideas, exploring masculinity, fatherhood, and connection. Within that specific tripartite lives an important insight into understanding the ways many men are socialised.

Over the years I’ve received some mild criticism aimed at how my poems tend to reinstate what’s regarded as the toxic side of masculinity – in that there’s a physicality and violence to them which some see as a performance of machismo. I agree, although I don’t necessarily see it as a negative, more so as a real-life dilemma being problematised through art, or at least that’s my intention. I have little interest in sanitising my poems, I want them to appear in places as ugly, uncomfortable and fractured expressions.  

In Levis’ poem the speaker is depicted as a bit of a degenerate; a philander, drinking alone in music bars until casually hooking up with a woman, perhaps looking for the same thing as he is. I admire the poem for its honesty and that subtle yearning. Levis creates a real sense of emptiness within an interior full of things, which in poetry we come to know as life and activity. It feels open in a way that accepts the moral dilemma the speaker is caught in, but also the selfishness of the individual too. Again, this is very ‘masculine’, but I think Levis manages to strike a balance between the aloof Lothario and the tender father which manifests as a kind of guilt and maybe even shame at the end of the poem. 

With my poem, Things Already Lost, I wanted to pull in ideas around touch and being touched through a series of frames – themes of disgust, nurture, accidents, safety and compromise all weave in and out of the scenes. Parenting is very much about accommodating another life, almost to the point your own life becomes completely eclipsed by that of your child, and I think we learn the different variations of touch and danger (which is also associated with care) through these kinds of events. 

Poetry as a medium offers opportunity for wider political and social commentary, something which is made even more potent when combined with the visual culture of film. But poems don’t necessarily need to set out to solve or resolve anything. Poems can hold many different ideas at once; sometimes contrasting and competing theories can be juxtaposed. 

I’m not really interested in poems as vehicles for ‘truth’. There’s something limiting, didactic and manipulative about poems which set out to prove a point or settle a score or convince the reader of a point of view. I appreciate those poems have a function and an audience but for me I find it better to try and create a multidimensional interior that resists slogans and imperatives and punch lines, where complex and nuanced ideas can exist and be explored with a more lateral push – one that can harness ambiguity, the senses and the mind too.

Poetry can encourage readers to allow themselves to feel confused and vulnerable. To get in touch with their own curiosity and embrace uncertainty. Any poem which is easily explained or pinned down is probably only working half as hard as it could be, and maybe doesn’t need to necessarily be a poem at all. Lots of lyric poems are just wanting to tell you something that happened to them, but in chopped up verse. I struggle to get excited about what I feel I already know to be true, or if the ideas lean so much into realism the language loses pressure and invention altogether. However, there’s also a fine balance in the kind of difficulty that wears a reader down or locks them out of the poem. That is also an issue with lots of writing. Personally, I’m always angling for that sweet spot which says I know what it means, I just can’t really explain it. It’s here amidst the uncomfortable and the uncertain where inspiration emerges and poetry can be itself.

About UK Global Majority Poets on Film 2025

UK Global Majority Poets on Film 2025 is a new short film series from WritersMosaic and the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation expanding the reach of award-winning, global majority poets through the visual culture of film. You can watch the films on the WritersMosaic website.

About Anthony Anaxagorou

Anthony Anaxagorou FRSL is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist and publisher.

His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. It was listed as one of New Statesman’s top books of 2022.

His second collection, After the Formalities published with Penned in the Margins, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize along with the 2021 Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year.

In 2020 he published How To Write It with Merky Books; a practical guide fused with tips and memoir looking at the politics of writing as well as the craft of poetry and fiction along with the wider publishing industry.

Anthony is the artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press. He is the editor-in-chief of Propel Magazine, an online literary journal featuring the work of poets yet to publish a first collection and the founder and curator of WriteBack, a quarterly literary series held at the British Library.

In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow at the University of Roehampton. In 2023 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Follow Anthony: anthonyanaxagorou.com/ | Insta @anthony_anaxagorou

About WritersMosaic

WritersMosaic is a developmental resource, division of the Royal Literary Fund and online magazine celebrating and showcasing writers of the global majority.

World Book Day is the annual celebration of books, it’s the perfect day to promote the wonderful world of reading, reciting, writing of poetry.

People from across the globe come together to revel in the joy of books and to celebrate how sharing words can bring people together in difficult times. Everyone, everywhere is invited to join in!

Apples and Snakes are marking World Book Day 2025 by sharing some of our favourite pieces from the recent SPIN anthology. To get your copy and to join this global band of wordsmiths just click the button below.

Happy Book Poetry Day 2025!

Eileen Gbagbo:

Summers at Grandma’s House

Jay Sandhu:

Mario Kart Pantoum

Ioney Smallhorne:

My Friend Finola

Gayathiri Kamalakanthan:

Ammā Means More Than Mother

Shagufta K Iqbal

There are Cats in the Mosque

Established in 1999, World Poetry Day has brought the brilliance, fun and enjoyment of poetry to millions of people across the world. Find out more about World Poetry Day here:

Young Producers q&a

Our Young Producers have been working incredibly hard over the last few months learning what it takes to plan and deliver a live poetry event. The Young Producer programme continued following our merger with Poet in the City and has been delivered in conjunction with Dugdale Arts Centre.

As the producers enter their final sessions and with their live event on the horizon we took a few moments to speak to some of the participants to find out why they decided to apply to the course, what they’ve learned during the past months and where the future might take them…

Toyosi Somoye

What do you think is the most important thing you have learned about producing?
The most important thing I’ve learned about producing is the value of adaptability. One key lesson the facilitators emphasized during the programme is that things will inevitably go wrong, whether on the day of the event or during the planning process. Being able to stay calm and adjust as new challenges arise is an essential skill for any producer.

Why do you think developing the next generation of Producers is important for the industry?
Developing the next generation of producers is essential for building a lasting legacy in the industry. It’s the responsibility of those who came before to share their knowledge, helping others avoid similar mistakes and grow stronger. Producers play a critical role in overseeing and managing projects, ensuring they come to life. By cultivating capable, passionate, and eager producers, we can sustain the poetry industry and continue attracting audiences to shows and events.

About Toyosi:

Toyosi is a British-Nigerian project manager, poet, and spoken word artist with a deep passion for storytelling.

As a TEDx speaker, she uses her words to build meaningful worlds, striving to make people feel SEEn (served, educated, and empowered) through her work.

Toyosi joined the Young Producers course to expand her skill set and deepen her understanding of bringing ideas to life, from conception to execution.

Alexandra Betts

Why is becoming a poetry producer important to you?
I enjoy giving people a platform to have a voice and express themselves. In producing poetry events, I enjoy being able to organise an event that brings together an audience and a speaker who shares their work in a personal and intimate space.

What have you enjoyed about the producer’s course?
I have enjoyed the opportunity to learn about a valuable job in the industry which I didn’t know much about before starting this course. I’ve loved knowing this course will give back to my local community by providing them with great entertainment and hopefully a new outlook or feeling to walk away with.

About Alexandra:

Alexandra Betts is a student and amateur theatre performer from a British-Columbian background based in Enfield, North London. She is a theatre lover with a growing interest in poetry and spoken word, who works to give people a voice. She has worked with Chickenshed Theatre Company’s summer programme to provide acting workshops to young children, and worked with the BBC in shadowing a TV drama director and their crew. She hopes to continue to grow into the industry, learning new roles and gaining new experiences across the wide world of creative arts and performance.

Faith Falayi

What have you enjoyed about the producer’s course?
I’ve really enjoyed meeting and working with all the other producers. There’s always a great energy in the room and it’s amazing to be able to bring all our talents and ideas together to create an event we’re proud of.

Why is becoming a poetry producer important to you?
It’s important to me because celebrating poetry and poets is a way to keep so many individual and interlinking communities alive. Giving space to these words, ideas and expressions has a lasting impact that goes far beyond the end of any poetry night.

About Faith:

Faith is a University of Cambridge English graduate, spoken word artist and creative based in Peterborough.

Her work focuses on documenting and archiving the art of everyday life. Currently, Faith works with the Peterborough Cultural Alliance to co-produce and host ‘Culture Talks’, a podcast celebrating and challenging the various aspects of cultural engagement in the city.

Zoe Athanasiou

Tell us about your plans once the sessions have finished?
Once the sessions have ended, I’ll keep working with the music organisations like Odyssey
Festival Orchestra (as the Social Media Manager) that I’m already involved with, putting
everything I’ve learned into practice. I’m also excited to have the confidence to produce
some projects of my own for example a local Enfield clothes swap event and local music and
poetry events using the skills and connections I’ve gained along the way.

Why is becoming a poetry producer important to you?
Becoming a poetry producer matters to me because I’m passionate about creating spaces
where the arts, especially spoken forms like poetry, are accessible to everyone. With my
undergraduate background in English Literature and Music from the University of Leeds, I’ve
always believed in the power of the arts to spark change and start important conversations.
I’d love to be part of amplifying voices through poetry and using it to make a real impact in
society.

Why do you think developing the next generation of Producers is important for the
industry?
Developing the next generation of producers is really important because learning these skills
isn’t always accessible with the cost of living, lack of funding for the arts and high
educational fees. A course like this is great because it lets young people build their skills
while still working full-time jobs, which makes a huge difference

What have you enjoyed about the producer’s course?
I’ve really enjoyed working with the facilitators and getting great advice from them during
the course. Learning the theory behind producing has been super interesting and helpful.
Plus, meeting other young producers and building a network has been such a lovely
experience!

About Zoe:

Zoé is a passionate producer with a BA English Literature and Music degree from the University of Leeds. She is driven by the belief that the arts can create social change and express culture, emotion, and feeling. A lifelong musician with a Diploma level in the Violin and Grade 8 proficiency in both Oboe and Piano, Zoé’s love for live events was sparked by her experience playing in multiple musical ensembles. Zoé is also a violinist and Social Media Manager for the Odyssey Festival Orchestra, contributing to concert production and marketing ideas. Her work is all about creating meaningful and accessible experiences while connecting communities through the arts.

Ebun Lawal

What has surprised you most about learning to become a producer?
I did not expect to have these many spreadsheets and planning involved in events. There are also so many unwritten rules that you should know that you tend to learn from experience. It was great to learn from people that have vast experience organising events.

What has surprised you most about learning to become a producer?
I will organise events in the Houses of Parliaments that will inspire young people to get involved in having their voices heard in politics.

About Ebun

My name is Ebun. I’m the founder of Corporate Jungle, we help connect Tech businesses with great sales people. I have organised events in Parliament, prisons around London and corporate spaces but this programme really forced me to understand the fundamentals! 

I hope you guys enjoy our event. 

Ozioma Ihesiene

Tell us about your plans once the sessions have finished?
After this programme, I plan to create poetry workshops that help people navigate the feeling of loneliness through creative expression. The Enfield Producers Programme has been invaluable in teaching me how to produce and orchestrate meaningful events in the world of poetry. My goal is to empower individuals to find connection and healing through their words, and I’m excited to bring these workshops to life and build spaces where creativity becomes a bridge to community.

About Ozioma

Ozioma Ihesiene is a dynamic creative force—an actor, writer, and director. She starred in the BAFTA-shortlisted short Festival of Slaps and won POCC’s “Future Perspectives” competition with her poem Prayer, which was showcased on billboards across the U.K. Her directorial debut, Before I Go, premiered at Theatre Peckham and sold out at Camden People’s Theatre and Brixton House, with the play now published text. She is part of the Enfield producers cohort, as she continues crafting spaces and impactful stories.

Now discover what our Young Producers have been creating over the last few months:

Rewind: Take me back

Friday 07 Mar, 7pm-9:30pm
Dugdale Arts Centre 

From the poetry performances to live music, expect a blast from the past that will have you unlocking memories you didn’t even know you forgot. This will be an exciting evening to bring your friend, bring a parent, bring your whole family along. This is an opportunity to experience a night of poetry and live music.

Hey Folks,

It’s that time of year where we do a ‘quick’ round-up of all things Apples!!  We thought 2024 might have been a bit of quieter following our 40^th anniversary season but it seems to have been busier than ever.

Big news this year has been our merger with Poet in the City, not something we envisioned at the start of 2024 but which we are delighted has happened. Our producer Natalie has stepped up to be the Poet in the City Programme Director and we are delighted that Lennie Goodings, Lucy Dundas, Charlotte Cole and Shahrukh Bhatty have joined us from the Poet in the City board as Apples and Snakes trustees. The first Young Producer’s programme is underway in Ealing and more work under the Poet in the City Strand of work will begin in earnest in 2025.

We were also delighted to welcome Ty’rone Haughton as our first Trainee Artistic Director. This role was specifically created to grow leadership skills. We encourage other organisations to join us in creating and supporting further trainee AD positions so we can shape the future leadership of the arts.

For a long time, I really wanted us to have a digital noticeboard to be able to share all the events and opportunities that come our way, and now Janet (our Digital and Marketing manager) along with our friends over at D237 have made that happen! Check out UNLISTED for all your poetry opps! This board is for you all to use, to share and celebrate all things poetry and arts.

The other thing on my wish list was for us to have a space to support artists making work, we haven’t quite got there yet but we moved from our big office to a smaller one at the Albany, enabling us to be offer some rehearsal space to artists that we are working with. One day we will have our home for Spoken Word…one day!! Thanks to Rob for making this happen as it was a mammoth task!

Our work with children, young people and families continued with: Book A Poet, delivering workshops across the country, a pilot programme with A New Direction working in 5 London primary schools, some experimental visual art and poetry with Lewisham Looked After Children Services and PLOT17 – our hip-hop eco-show for children performed both indoors and out this year at various festivals and venues across the country.

We were delighted to receive further support from John Lyon’s Charity. For 2024-2025 they are supporting WordCraft, a programme puts poets in residence in five Ealing primary schools for ten weeks. To date, three of the five WordCraft residencies have been completed led by BREIS and Kat Francois with huge positive impact for pupils. 

“With BREIS here, I actually found my voice. Like, before BREIS came I was like such a shy girl. I couldn’t even say one sentence without stopping.  I used to cry really easily. I was like quite sensitive.  But when BREIS was here and he helped us write this poem and because he said good things and he praised me I actually said it. Yes!  And that changed my habits’

WordCraft – Year 4 pupil,  Dairy Meadow Primary School

Led by Associate Producer Marcelle, our work in libraries grew with SPINE Lite engaging nearly 1300 children and families and John Lyon’s Charity providing three years of funding to develop our Telling Tales and Library Take Over projects. Activities will take place in libraries in the following six London boroughs Brent, Camden, Ealing, Harrow, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster. SPINE Lite took place across 16 boroughs in London, delivering 69 events and employing 27 artists and poets.

If you’re looking for the perfect poetry themed Christmas Gift for children then the SPIN anthology edited by Joseph Coelho is for you!

Supporting and developing artists across the country is at the heart of what we do and we started the year with the end of our Future Voices programme which commissioned 40 poets from across the country and created 40 short poetry films. You can watch them online and some of the artists have gone on to do incredible work over the last 12 months.

In 2024 we also delivered:

• On the Side – 6 early career poets in residence over 2 months as part of an art exhibition writing 43 poems in response to the artworks as well as receiving professional development session.
• Artists Retreats, which brings poets together to spend a day recharging themselves with workshops focused on the crossover between wellness and creative writing.
• Online workshops including Red Sky Sessions, our open access development programme for aspiring writers aged 18 to infinity and awareness day celebrations
• Words A Stage 2.0 for early career poets which has 8 online workshops followed by a week-long residential at Arvon.
• Saluting New Daughters of Africa, a day-long programme of workshops, talks and performances celebrating 5 years of this important anthology.
• Supported UniSlam, as a key partner in this project which works with emerging poets currently at university where they come together for a weekend of performances and workshops in Birmingham, and GOBS Collective in Nottingham with their artist development programmes.

As part of our environmental and sustainability work (which is still in development), we worked in partnership with Zena Edwards/Nature Persists on the online Synergy Slam project. TREES and SOIL are now available as free online workshops for you to explore and enjoy.

Audiences enjoyed watching our poets live at various festivals over the summer as well as monthly at Jawdance as well as online through our Podcast and Black box series all produced by Iman. Check out all of our digital content via the read/watch/listen section on our website.

SPEAK UP NEWCOMER, our US Embassy funded programme in collaboration with Young Identity continued with visits from Mahogany Browne in September & Amyra León in November….we also managed to squeeze in an international Women’s Day Workshop with Safia Elhillo and a workshop with Danez Smith in October. We worked with partner organisations in Manchester, Birmingham and Coventry.

Over the summer, we also got to collaborate with Red Room Poetry and Word Travels based in Australia as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival. You can read more about this lovely collaboration in their collaborative blogpost and listen to the full poem.

I’ll end with a heartfelt thanks to all our funders and partner organisations that have supported us over the past year, your support really enables us to have impact.

And extra thanks and love to:

• all the amazing poets that have jumped on a mic, delivered a workshop, participated in a programme, been commissioned, called for advice, or connected with us in some way, Apples and Snakes exist because to poets and its always a privilege to work with you
• all our trustees who give up their time voluntarily to support the organisation
• the Apples and Snakes team: Ben, Daniela, Iman, Janet, Marcelle, Mark, Natalie, Rob, Robert, Russell, Sarah, Ty’rone & Yelena for being awesome.

On a personal note, 2024 marked me being at Apples and Snakes for 20 years (various roles and 2 kids in that time), which I honestly cannot believe but I’ve stayed for so long because of the amazing artists that I have the privilege to work with and the Apples and Snakes team that really care about the work we are doing,

Roll on 2025!!

Lisa 
X

Apples & Snakes announces its first Trainee Artistic Director as Poet and playwright Ty’rone Haughton

We are very excited to finally share the news that Leicester based Ty’rone Haughton will be joining us for the next two years as Trainee Artistic Director. Ty’rone was named one of BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Future Figures 2023 for his contributions to the arts and social care. He was selected through a highly competitive recruitment process from 37 excellent candidates. 

Ty’rone stood out to the selection panel as a multi-skilled artist and producer with extensive knowledge of the national spoken word community and social care sector. He has a strong and clear vision for what he wants to achieve as the Trainee Artistic Director at Apples & Snakes.  

This will be the first Trainee Artistic Director post for the company, created to address the shortage of potential artistic directors within arts and culture. This new role provides a direct opportunity for developing skills and experience for those interested in leadership and a new trainee will be appointed every two years.

Recognising that there is no real progression pathway into the cultural leadership roles that many of them seek, Apples & Snakes wanted to create an opportunity and pathway for these poets. It was conceived in response to feedback from the spoken word community, where poets are often innovators and creative entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds who show natural leadership. 

Ty’rone will shadow Apples & Snakes Artistic Director Lisa Mead across all aspects of the Apples & Snakes leadership. This includes creative producing, financial management, fundraising, human resources, partner relationships and communications with an extra budget available for additional training. The trainee programme is designed so that the first year will focus on training and development where Ty’rone will be supported to develop a strategic project to be delivered by the company in year two. 

Lisa Mead, Artistic Director, Apples and Snakes said: “We are delighted Ty’rone is joining us as our first Trainee Artistic Director. Our sector needs the talent and insight that artists like Ty’rone bring but they also need support and training to ensure they can fully realise their leadership potential. We have created this new role to address this gap in provision and help ensure there is equal opportunity at every level. As a small organisation, we can only support one trainee every two years and we call on our peers to replicate our initiative. Together we can create the next generation of leaders who may otherwise not have the resources or connections to break through and sustain senior roles.” 

Ty’rone Haughton said: “I have always held Apples & Snakes in high regard and been grateful for how they pioneered Spoken Word in the UK and believe in its vision and ambition. I think this new role is extremely important because arts and culture are full of artists who feel there is a glass ceiling or a cap to their equity in the sector. For Apples & Snakes to invest in someone like me prepares me for leadership through necessary training which isn’t available elsewhere. I hope this positive step is the start of a trend. 

The work of poets and the role of poetry in society is transformative; it is healing and empowering, which I have directly experienced. The more we can get poets and communities to engage, the more positive an impact we can make in the world. I want to foster a thriving national ecosystem of poetry opportunities and talent development, breaking down borders and siloes so we can begin to connect on a larger scale. Creating purposeful work with communities around the country. What I bring to Apples & Snakes is my ambition and innovation; I am someone who looks at what has already been done to find ways of building upon that. And I am always in search of what is new and exciting. Watch this space, as they say.”

…only 11% of children’s books published in 2021 featured a character from a Global Majority background. Even more starkly, just 2% of U.K. children’s authors and illustrators come from these communities.

mY jOURNEY INTO WRITING FOR CHILDREN

Writing for children wasn’t always part of my plan, though my career has consistently brought me into the orbit of young people and their stories. As a writer, educator, and advocate for creative expression, I’ve long believed in the power of words to shape young minds. Over the years, this belief has driven me to deliver writing workshops for children and young people through organizations like First Story, WEM, and the National Literacy Trust. I’ve had the privilege of being a writer-in-residence in three secondary schools, engaging students in the transformative magic of poetry and storytelling.

In my teaching role, I work with 15-19-year-olds, guiding them through GCSE English Language resits. Here, I see firsthand how powerful words can be in building confidence and creating connections. These experiences have deeply influenced my understanding of what young audiences need and how they connect to literature. But until recently, I hadn’t thought of myself as someone who writes specifically for children.

That changed in 2022 when I was selected for the Joseph Coelho/Otter Barry Books/Apples & Snakes, Diversifying Children’s Literature project. This initiative, which aims to amplify underrepresented voices, culminated in the children’s poetry anthology Spin, where five of my poems found a home. It was a pivotal moment—one where I began to see how my voice and perspective could resonate with younger readers.

Then, in 2024, I joined the Apples & Snakes, Simon Mole and CLPE’s Writing for Primary Audiences project. This experience reignited my love for poetry and opened a new chapter in my creative journey. It was here that I began working on a poetry collection about meteorology, climate change, and weather systems, a topic inspired by my Caribbean heritage and its deep connection to the natural world.

Representation in U.K. Children’s Literature

Despite my growing passion for children’s literature, it’s impossible to ignore the significant barriers faced by writers like me. Representation in U.K. children’s publishing remains alarmingly disproportionate. According to the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), only 11% of children’s books published in 2021 featured a character from a Global Majority background. Even more starkly, just 2% of U.K. children’s authors and illustrators come from these communities. I’ll pause to allow that statistic to cyclone for a moment…

These statistics are a sobering reminder of the urgent need for change. Stories shape how children see themselves and others, and the lack of diverse voices limits not only representation but also the richness of narratives available to young readers. As a writer with Caribbean heritage, I feel a deep responsibility to contribute stories that reflect the multiplicity of experiences within our global community.

Projects like the ones I’ve been part of— Spin and the Writing for Primary Audiences initiative —are crucial steps toward addressing this imbalance. They show that when marginalized voices are given space and support, they can create stories that resonate across cultures and generations.

What’s Next

My first children’s poetry collection is currently taking shape. Inspired by my Caribbean heritage and first hand experiences living there, the collection explores themes of weather, climate change, and meteorology through a lens that is both scientific and deeply personal. It weaves together the beauty and power of the natural world with the urgency of addressing climate change—a topic that feels especially relevant to today’s young readers.

Alongside the collection, I am developing a scratch theatre show, working title, Be a Hurricane. This interactive, educational performance is designed for 7-11-year-olds, blending live soundscapes with storytelling. It’s a space where children can not only learn about weather systems but also contribute their own voices to the performance, making it a truly collaborative experience.

As I move forward, I’m excited about the opportunities to connect with young audiences in meaningful ways. Writing for children has become more than a creative endeavor for me—it’s a mission to inspire, educate, and represent. By sharing stories that reflect the world’s diversity and its challenges, I hope to ignite curiosity, empathy, and action in the next generation.

Final Thoughts

This journey into children’s literature feels both new and familiar, a continuation of the work I’ve always done to empower young people through poetry. The path ahead is full of challenges—breaking into a predominantly white, middle-class publishing industry is no easy feat—but it’s also filled with possibility.

Representation in children’s literature is not just about numbers; it’s about ensuring every child sees themselves as part of the story. It’s about crafting worlds where all voices matter and where the complexities of our shared humanity are celebrated. I’m honored to play a part in that effort and excited to see where this journey takes me next. 

Ioney Smallhorne

Ioney is a writer, poet, performer & educator from Nottingham. Her craft is ignited by her Jamaican heritage, fueled by the tapestry of the Black British experience, & smolders with the essence of the natural world & womanhood. 

An alumni of Goldsmith College’s MA in Creative Writing & Education, Obisidan Black Poets 2023, & Peepal Tree Press Inscribe writer program. Shortlisted for the Caribbean Small-Axe prize 2016 &, for the Sky Arts/Royal Society of Literature Fiction Award 2021. Winner of the Writing East Midlands/Serendipity Black Ink Writing Competition 2021 & longlisted for the Moniak Mhor, Emerging Writer award 2024. She was the 2022 New Art Exchange resident artist & selected for the Middle Way Mentoring program, 2023-2025.

Find her work in Spin, children’s Poetry anthology (Otter-Barry Books), and Glimpse, the first Black British speculative fiction collection, (Peepal Tree Press).

Earlier this year, Apples and Snakes and Red Room Poetry united to host a workshop for young poets aged 14-18 as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival. It included Young Poet Laureate for Coventry Aamani Kanda (UK) and Australian Poetry Slam Co-Champion KJ Haywood (AUS) for an interactive look at how to craft great poetry with flint and heart.

This workshop included a reading of their poem – ‘Scars’ -Aamani and KJ have collaboratively crafted in celebration of Poetry Month and Contains Strong Language

We were so impressed with the collaboration between Aamani and KJ, not only how they managed to find common ground across a vast time zone, but also with common themes and similar ideas around the issues facing young people in society today. We decided to interview them about making a collaborative poem together, and find out a little bit more about their individual journeys into poetry so far.

You can read the full poem over at Red Room Poetry or listen to ‘Scars’ below:

Tell us a bit about yourselves

KJ: Hello! I’m K.J. Hayward, the Australian Poetry Slam Co-champion of 2023 – and I’m that spontaneous, weird type that adopts a new hobby every week only to drop it for something even more spontaneous and weird the week after. In fact, poetry is the only thing I’ve ever really stuck to!

I have been writing since I could pick up a pen. However, my career in performing ‘Slam’ is very recent. Whilst travelling Australia, I had collected all of these poems about the people I had met. One day I decided to perform them at an open mic night in my hometown where I was invited by an audience member to participate in a slam competition. 

Four public performances later I had been co-crowned Australia’s National Champion and was rushed into planning for my tour and book publishing not long after! It was one whirlwind of an experience and one that certainly matches my personality.

Aamani: Hey! I’m Aamani Kanda, Coventry’s Young Poet Laureate. My poetry career started not too long ago, when I applied for this role in 2022. I like to focus on building a sense of community and connection with my poetry, which focuses on a multitude of socially inspired motifs, such as feminism and mental health. To be honest, I have always had a calling to reading, and it was a while before I realised this was accompanied by a passion for writing. Covid-19 lockdowns, in which I began to “dabble” in the occasional poem, really solidified my love for writing.  

This project involved writing a collaborative poem, what was the most exciting part of collaborating with a poet from a different country? How did the process differ from your usual process of writing a poem?

KJ: Getting to know Aamani through this collaboration and connecting with her over the shared art of poetry has been both fascinating and familiar. Whilst Aamani’s style brings new perspectives, I’ve also noticed that no matter where in the world we come from, we all share the same worries, insecurities and concerns – even if we voice them differently.

Combining our ideals of body image in our joint poem felt uplifting to know that someone else had experienced similar doubts, despite our differences.

The process of writing over email and across time-zones was really interesting. Fortunately though, it wasn’t too much of an obstacle. I feel that our topic and ideas worked really well for the both of us and within days we had created the bulk of our poem. Working to someone else’s inspiration was a new experience, but it was made easy as we shared a lot of the same views. The hardest part was probably combining the separate poems we wrote into one connected story. With poetry, it’s hard to calculate where to break up the flow.

Aamani: Initially, I was concerned that KJ and I would be worlds apart due to our differing experiences with poetry. However, it was a relief to see that we could connect in ways I hadn’t considered, showing the simplicity of humanity. Working with KJ, who has a different background to mine, felt liberating. The most exciting part of working with KJ was finding levels to connect on despite the qualities that set us apart, and our poem connected us through the theme of feminism presented through body dysmorphia, a criticism of beauty standards. 

The process of writing our poem did not differ too significantly from my process of writing poetry individually. Working together meant giving each other the space for enough creative liberty, whilst not straying too far from the original theme. Through our collaboration, we recognised overlaps in our writing that we wanted to highlight, which emphasised the contrast between our separate monologues.  

What would be your number one tip for someone writing a collaborative poem?

KJ: … don’t wait to be given the greenlight. If you have an idea, just throw it in and work from that – you can always edit if necessary. Also, I think it’s important to not let go of your own style in an attempt to match someone else’s. Every poet presents a unique style and writes their best without any additional restrictions. 

But also, don’t be too rigid. The collaboration isn’t a You vs Them situation, it’s all about teamwork!

Aamani: Get to know the people you’re collaborating with! A simple ice-breaking activity, or even just reading their personal bio to understand what their usual style is like can help you to understand one another better. Upon meeting KJ, we did an activity where we discussed what type of weather pattern matched our mood for the day: this was an excellent topic of discussion to keep the call feeling more open and personal. 

You also got to facilitate a workshop together – what did you learn about co-facilitation?

KJ: I really enjoyed facilitating the workshop with Aamani. It was exciting to learn Aamani’s style through her exercise and it’s certainly a technique I’ll use again. I definitely learned that it’s important to bounce off of each other and to invite your co-facilitator into your activity as they may have some good advice to match.

Not panicking when things don’t flow with your group like you planned is also a useful tool to learn. Just move on and read your room for what catches their attention or engages them the most. I have a tendency to ramble to fill silences, but I suggest, to avoid burnout, that you take those periods to breathe and take a break.

Aamani: Co-facilitating a workshop was an awesome opportunity, and I learnt that it’s okay to lean on each other for help. KJ used her initiative to keep the workshop moving when I had technical issues, which I was so grateful for. I think facilitating this workshop taught me that it’s important to remember to ask for help when you’re overwhelmed. 

What’s next for you as a poet?

KJ: As part of my tour, I performed to a group of kinder kids (3-4yrs) alongside a 7ft inflatable hippopotamus eating cake! I loved the energy in the room so much that I am looking to publish a children’s book and illustrating the poem I wrote for them. I’d love to have another written collection of my poetry published as well. Other than that I’m working on spreading my message of kindness, love and acceptance to as many people as I can, in whatever form that may take.

Aamani: As for my personal career, I hope to get more involved in the poetry scene, especially with performance poetry! I am looking to reach a stage of frequently performing and writing. 

Which poet would you most love people to know about?

KJ: I resource poetry from all around the world and mostly from platforms such as YouTube, so a few of my favourites to recommend are: Sarah Kay, for her powerful yet simple imagery, Rudy Franciso, who makes love poems cool, and Australia’s own Luka Lesson, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a writers’ festival.

Aamani: John Bernard, Coventry’s Poet Laureate. He has been such an influence on me as a newcomer to the poetry scene, and his work inspires our local youth. It’s mix of poetry and rap that carries a lot of heart and soul, and his hard work shows! 

About Red Room Poetry and the artists

Red Room Poetry (RR) is Australia’s leading organisation for commissioning, creating, publishing and promoting poetry in meaningful ways. RR has a reputation for excellence and invention, delivering projects that are unparalleled in their quality, scale, professional payment of poets, cultural impact, amplification and engagement of poets, students and audiences of all ages.

Aamani Kanda is an 18 year old poet and Coventry’s Young Poet Laureate. She is inspired by the culture that surrounds her, and is passionate about representing it. Despite developing a unique style, her work is influenced by the Romantic movement.

K.J. Hayward is an emerging spoken word artist, and APS Co-champion of 2023. In her poetry, she intertwines stories of feminism, youth, mental health and her own journey transitioning from ‘normal’ schooling to Home-school with the rap, rhythm and rhyme of slam poetry.

Presented by Red Room Poetry for Poetry Month and Contains Strong Language in partnership with Apples and Snakes (UK) and Word Travels (AUS). This project is supported by the British Council.

This Summer I visited Trinidad to have some dedicated writing time away from England. I was introduced to Mtima Solwazi the founder of the Roots Foundation, a spoken word organisation using local oral traditions to uplift local poets and spoken word artists, advocating for social change. Immediately he decided to include me in their annual Cascadoo Festival in August, already familiar with my work. They had not had an international poet join their festival since before the lockdown.

I was their headline poet performing in different venues across Trinidad, from Wing It on ‘D Avenue’ to joining the event at the Urban Farmer’s restaurant in Enterprise. When arriving, there was a lot of fearmongering with Trinidad being notoriously known for having some of the highest crime and murder rates in the world. Everywhere I went, I was warned “be careful, stay safe”. The people of Trinidad and Tobago were really kind and welcoming, which challenged existing colonial stereotypes of such communities.

Alongside being spoilt witnessing epic steel pan bands playing regularly in Port of Spain and at the Emancipation Village, I was booked to perform and facilitate at NALIS Library, alongside Roots Foundation local poets. I facilitated a workshop to young people on using spoken word and poetry as a tool for change, using my poetry films as examples. 

We discussed the flammable cladding on Grenfell in West London that took 72 lives, including 18 children predominantly from African and Muslim communities. We discussed the murder of child Tamir Rice in America by police in 2014, the genocide in Palestine and the unnecessary murder and crime rate in Trinidad. We drew parallels around the concerns of inner-city communities in both Trinidad and England, the impact of youth violence and neglected young people, police negligence and the residue of colonialism and white supremacy. 

A young person who attended the workshop was moved to tears mentioning his godmother who lives in England, understandably worried about her safety since the rise of far-right fascists attacking Africans and Muslims in England this Summer. The ripple effect of British fascism impacting the psyche of a young man in Trinidad in the Caribbean, having to worry for his loved ones and anxieties of his own safety when intending to move to England was upsetting. A healing and honest space was provided for the young people in attendance at the workshop. We ended the session performing poetry for them.

We facilitated a workshop at St Jude’s School for Girls, a school attended by young girls who are part of the care system and removed from their homes after being victims of domestic and sexual violence, perceived as ‘difficult’. Deneka Thomas, Trinidad’s legendary poet and founder of poetry night Bacano Leaf and local National Poetry Slam finalist, joined us to facilitate alongside Geron Ruiz, a talented finalist for the recent Youth On Stage competition.

We supported the young people to understand how to write a spoken word piece, each of us performed to give them an example of what their poem could potentially look like. We gave them some writing time and the girls ended the session by sharing what they wrote. The majority wrote about their rights as young girls, feelings of disappointment and betrayal by those who were meant to take care of them, the impact of misogyny – their own words of resistance and affirmation was displayed. The benefit of sharing the art form we love and passing this cathartic tool on was experienced in it’s fullness. 

The most profound workshop I appreciated being part of facilitating was at the Youth Training Centre, a jail for young people in Trinidad. There were 30 teenage boys in attendance and 2 young women. The incredible local Roots poets Emmanuel Villafana, Geron Ruiz and Michael Logie facilitated used Trinibad lyrics, Calypso and Soca lyrics as examples of poetic writing. I recited a poem l’d written about invasions in Jenin and Jenin’s youth martyred in Palestine. We collectively mind mapped topics they felt passionately about. Their growth and self-reflection could be felt in such a short space of time.

They wrote about not wanting to be back in jail, to want more for themselves, “I’ve done the crime now I’m doing the time”. They started off with examples like “squeeze the trigger like orange” to writing about wanting change. They were super talented and expressed themselves beautifully.

One of the boys he sat down twice not wanting to share what he wrote.I got up with him on the stage to support him and he sang his lyrics full of hope stunningly. We must never underestimate how far a little encouragement can go in empowering people.

Often, we can wait for Arts Council funding or a formal invitation prior to booking a flight. Sometimes it’s good as writers to network and reach out to organisations doing similar work when travelling, to have an experience as a writer and performer and not just merely sit by the swimming pool. My way of learning about a community I travel to live amongst and to understand their struggles is via grassroots organisations, through community work and immersing myself in the arts.

Youth work for me is not something I merely do on a whim in England, I continue the work informally or formally when in different countries to ensure youth empowerment continues and young people who do not have the means to travel, can broaden their perspective through engagement.

Trinidad and Tobago’s poets and performers are of a highly skilled standard as witnessed through Derron Sandy’s work. Their calibre and style encouraged me to step up and put more love into my performances, something I don’t usually have time to develop when always responding to emergency situations in the community or not having rehearsal space.

I walked away from Cascadoo Festival inspired as a writer and performer and hope to return and support the vision of the Roots Foundation collective as a second-generation Indian migrant poet raised in England with a love for Trinidad and Tobago and their rich culture. 

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Shareefa Energy

Shareefa Energy is a working-class South Asian award winning poet, writer, activist, community organiser and creative campaigner challenging British state violence, based in Leicester and London. She is the author of poetry collection Galaxy Walk, endorsed by the late Benjamin Zephaniah. Her poetry has featured on BBC The One Show, Channel 4 and ITV. She’s facilitated creative writing, poetry, storytelling and performance workshops internationally, from Palestine to Sierra Leone with schools, universities, academics, in prisons and immigration detention centres, with survivors of domestic violence and with those impacted by state violence. She facilitates nature, poetry and wellbeing workshops too, inspired by her spent time in the Amazon rainforest in Venezuela. She is a long-term supporter of the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice.

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During his time at Apples and Snakes, Owen led on the BBC Words First programme, developed our alumni Work From Home Programme, supported dozens of artists with successful DYCP applications and was instrumental in the sector-wide change of perception around young artist vs emerging artist via the Red Sky programme, amongst many other projects.

Having been a huge presence in the spoken word scene for the past 25 years, we are excited to see what Owen does next.

By: Shaniqua Benjamin

Although I’ve always loved writing, I stayed away from poetry until my early 20s. Fashion design had been my focus, so when I dropped out of university to pursue a career in writing and eventually discovered that poetry was the avenue for me, it was clear that I would need serious learning and development. Apples and Snakes were a major part of that, helping me grow from baby poet to Croydon Poet Laureate.

At the beginnings of my journey in 2017, I participated in a Croydon edition of The Writing Room, led by the amazing Zena Edwards. Zena would mentor me a year later as an emerging poet for Rallying Cry, an immersive spoken word show celebrating Apples and Snakes 35^th birthday, which is an experience that has stayed with me.

In fact, my 10-minute piece evolved into a 45-minute one-woman show I debuted last year – Love Warrior. Zena mentored me through that process too, having remained a major presence in my poetry career – even in moments when she hasn’t been physically present, her words of wisdom have remained in my mind. I will always be grateful to Apples and Snake for introducing me to her.

The development opportunities available to me through Apples and Snakes helped me grow into a more confident and stronger poet. Participating in the Red Sky Sessions, as a poet over 25 in the middle stages of my career, has allowed me to further explore my poetic voice and overcome my fear of form. 

The confidence and growth played a major part in me becoming the poet I am today, who can say that she is Croydon’s first Poet Laureate. I laid the groundwork through my community presence and running a poetry night for young people, but the poetic skills needed were elevated through mentoring, critique and learning from my peers, which I experienced as part of The Writing Room and Rallying Cry.

I officially became Croydon Poet Laureate in October 2020 and I’m now coming to the end of my tenure, four and a half years later. It has been a full-on rollercoaster of a journey that has encompassed some great projects, giving me the chance to engage with my borough on a deeper level. I’ve worked with schools and community groups, collaborated with musicians and dancers.

I worked with the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Croydon on Citizen UK: Croydon’s Caribbean Influencers, which has been the main highlight. This project brought together my Caribbean heritage and Croydon home, telling powerful stories that often go unheard. I had the gift of responding to interviews and oral histories in poetic form, alongside the artist Kyam who created portraits and the designer Abi Wright who brought the exhibition together. To see it displayed at the National Portrait Gallery after being exhibited at the Museum of Croydon, with my poetry both seen and heard, was a very special moment. It was beautiful to see Croydon celebrated in a positive light.

I’m now in the midst of my final project, which is bringing together all I’m passionate about with all I’ve wanted to achieve as Poet Laureate, and then some. Out of Silence is an intergenerational project, amplifying and empowering local voices, especially those marginalised. It is also showcasing poetry as more than boring words on a page for an elitest few (which is how many still view poetry), but a versatile and vibrant art form for everyone.

Workshops led by Croydon based poets Beverly Bossanga, Daisy Nash, Zhanai Wallace, Jamal Hassan, Jemilea Wisdom-Baako, and myself have been – and are still – taking place with teens, young adults and elders. Across the eight schools and community groups participating, some are refugees speaking English as a second or third language, some are disabled, some have never written poetry before. And the poems have all been beautiful, powerful, real, raw and heartbreaking. I’m so proud I have the chance to share the words of these gifted individuals, who I hope realise how brilliant they are and that their words have meaning. More than anything, I hope they feel heard and feel seen.

The poems will be shared at a live event, which will be private I’m afraid, but more excitingly, they are being made public through the poetry posters you’ve seen throughout, showcasing extracts from every single poem written. The QR code has a link to an online anthology with more information about the project and the poems in full too, so you can savour all their words, but if you want a shortcut, just click here.

These are the first round of the posters, showcasing most extracts from the schools and a few from a youth group I will continue working with this month. The rest of their poems, along with the poetic extracts by young adults and elders, will be displayed from June. The posters were designed by Croydon young people too, in collaboration with a local graphic designer, so it really is a project rooted in Croydon as I say goodbye to my role.

To cement my legacy, I’ll be writing a poem bringing together words from each of the eight groups, which will be made into a short film. Just as finding poetry, and organisations like Apples and Snakes, helped me find my voice and grow in confidence, I hope that Out of Silence will have encouraged and inspired the participants (and beyond) to do the same.

If you’re in the Croydon area, keep an eye out for the posters, and if you choose to take any photos, please do use the #OutofSilence.

Shaniqua Benjamin

Shaniqua is a poet, writer, creative workshop facilitator, and Croydon’s first Poet Laureate. Between 2016-2021, she ran Young People Insight CIC, a platform that empowered young people through creativity, conversation and writing.

Shaniqua wrote the lyrics for the London Mozart Players’ Anthem for Peace, and a specially commissioned poem for their Oratorio of Hope, which opened Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture in 2023. She also wrote a poem for the 2022 One Young World Summit, read by Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Ebinehita Iyere and herself. She has been published by Ink, Sweat & Tears,Magma, and RRB Photobooks with her poetry featured in Ameena Rojee’s photography book Crocus Valley.

She has performed at Field Day Festival and the Trinity College Cambridge Black History Month Formal Dinner. Shaniqua has facilitated workshops for organisations, including Spread The Word, Central St Martins, and Crisis. Her work has been displayed at the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of Croydon.

Twitter: @ShanqMarie
Instagram: @shaniquabenjamin_
LinkedIn: Shaniqua Benjamin

(Photo credit: Chetna Kapacee)

I was invited to The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank in Palestine as lead facilitator for the 2022 ‘Through The Eyes of Women – Feminist Theatre Festival,’ to deliver poetry and creative writing workshops, alongside performing poetry in Jenin and Ramallah. I last facilitated poetry and public speaking workshops with students in the West Bank in Nablus at An-Najah University in 2011. Workshop and performance schedules were postponed and cancelled last minute throughout the festival on numerous occasions, due to locals being murdered when the Israeli army invaded the camp. Witnessing the pressure on local Palestinian actors and students and The Freedom Theatre staff having to repeatedly reschedule and join local strikes, was an unfair reality. Palestinian creatives schedule is dictated by the Israeli occupation, the overbearing anxiety of a bereavement occurring close to home at any given moment.

I do workshops in England in schools, universities etc and I am also an activist and facilitator, working with those directly impacted by state violence from Britain to Palestine. Most of my work in institutions is about educating and presenting narratives. When working with communities who have deep trauma from experiencing state violence, the focus is on writing being a cathartic release, addressing a wound, releasing it, allowing a place for the rage and grief to sit externally. To look after my mental and physical health, poetry had to emerge for me to be able to process the burden of state violence inflicted on our communities. I always understood the importance of supporting others to release and not just experience the pain of existing in this unjust world.

Facilitating in Palestine required patience and understanding of the occupation and not having usual expectations, knowing last minute my performance could be postponed mid rehearsal cause the neighbours family was now bereaved. The Freedom Theatre continues to be a safe space for young people and children, attempts to continue as ‘normal’. The blessing of being a facilitator whose supported the Palestinian cause for decades, meant holding space with young people and women about their life experiences and providing a creative outlet through poetry. I was able to present them realities in Britain, talk to them about Tamir Rice, about Grenfell, about gentrification in Tottenham and critique white liberal feminism. My workshops were more than just a space to write, they were a safe space to converse, to be asked questions on topics that were taboo, open discussions about women’s rights locally, listen to their wishes for young girls in Jenin, having young men come forward wanting to discuss the impact of domestic violence on their lives.   

On my second night of arriving in Jenin Refugee Camp, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy Dirar Kafrini was murdered horrifically by sniper by the Israeli army in Jenin Refugee Camp. The theatre paused the festival in solidarity with Dirar’s family. I witnessed numerous local and national strikes during my 2 months in Palestine. Respecting the local communities’ decisions and being ready to accelerate or brake accordingly was needed, without taking it personal. Gaza was bombed on Friday 5^th August, my performance at Fragments Theatre in Jenin had rightfully been postponed in solidarity with Gaza. I was grateful The Freedom Theatre made the decision to reschedule the event. We weren’t in the mood to reduce casualties to poetry soundbites, as though words were enough to commemorate innocent martyrs when blood on the streets hadn’t dried. 

Facilitating respite and a safe space for young people to process was an honour, to pass on writing skills and see people surprised when uniting with the poet in them, encouraging them to express their own stories and be autonomous in this struggle, challenging this idea of ‘voiceless’ communities. A 16-year-old only just started to process immense loss from when he was a child, my role was to prioritise listening over writing, converse and only then support him to write about it, to get it off his chest and remember his voice and grief is valid. 

I’ve written a lot of poetry about Palestine that I perform regularly in the community, at protests etc to unite people to show solidarity with Palestinians. I mention Palestine when I’m performing at an anti-racism conference, use my role as a poet and educator to speak up about apartheid at a plush venue in Shoreditch and in the classroom. 

“You want me to write about the martyr

And my mind asks, which one?

You want to write. About Salah but not about Yousif

About Ibrahim. But not about Ebtisam.

About Shireen. But not about Baraa’.

About Sind and not about Yazid.

 I don’t write about my friend

 martyred at the gates of Jenin Refugee Camp, 

beaten to death by the hands of Israelis

the burning tyres didn’t protect him.”  Jamal Abujoass (22, The Freedom Theatre student)

Facilitating workshops under the Israeli occupation in Palestine where extrajudicial killings is a regular occurrence, is about being mindful and politically aware of the dynamics and sensitive towards the layers of grief and injustice the community continue to be exposed to. Unlike working with North Kensington community after the Grenfell fire with PTSD, Palestinians do not have ordinary PTSD. The trauma is ongoing with no respite, awaiting another raid, another loss of life of someone close, hearing another staff member was harassed at a checkpoint and kidnapped under administrative detention like The Freedom Theatre chair Bilal Al-Saadi and the co-founder of the theatre Zakaria Zubeidi in Israeli prison. On the morning of 21^st November 2022, Mahmoud Al-Sadi, a 17-year-old trainer for The Freedom Theatre Child and Youth Program from Jenin refugee camp was murdered by the Israeli army during a raid on his way to school. The theatre devastated went into collective mourning, he was a part of the theatre since he was a child, accessing art and laughter away from the brutal reality of the occupation outside. Even he couldn’t escape the occupations bullets. 

Jamal told me he wished he could have lived a life where he could hear the sound of music solely in the air like the rest of the world, not the daily violent music of gunshots in Jenin Refugee Camp. I wondered what beautiful freedom he would write about as a talented writer if life under occupation wasn’t forever present in his psyche, forced to be on high alert. He is forced to confront the Israeli occupation daily through his poetry. I have the privilege of being further removed from this reality, only writing about Palestine when something emotionally upsets me and the choice to recite about Palestine. It’s an option to disrupt and discuss using poetry, there is no option for Jamal. 

‘You can’t write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.’ Berthold Brecht

Days after I left Palestine at the end of September, the Israeli army begun raiding Jenin Refugee Camp during the day as well as in the dead of the night. On 3^rd November, Ahmed Tobasi the artistic director of The Freedom Theatre and actor recorded a powerful video in despair, when could they continue as a Theatre like the rest of the world without interruptions and fearmongering by the occupation.  

Only when the Israeli occupation crumbles will artists in Palestine be able to exist and create without the perimeters of the overbearing ghoul of the occupation. They are forced to navigate this reality, to use art to advocate their rights to the international community.  International poets, artists and practitioners need to push more in solidarity with Palestinians to ensure we all have an equal right to freedom and the space to write, create and perform without worrying about the next military raid, the next blackout during a workshop cause the Israeli army showed up and cut off the electricity. Palestinians are not mere soundbites to cram into one line of a poem. They are loved, they are part of communities, they are martyred youth who will be missed. Everyone deserves the right to create without such heaviness, grief and violent interruptions surrounding their everyday.

I scroll on twitter to see Jenin Refugee Camp has been raided by the Israeli occupation and a massacre has taken place weekly, I rush to check on my friends and the young people I worked with in Palestine concerned of their safety and their grieving process. A 17-year-old lost another friend days apart, who was also a child. I remind him to write in the book I gifted him for him to continue to express himself during my absence and utilise the coping tools I shared with him. He’s young and bright, yet there’s sorrow in his eyes and ongoing hauntings. I’m stuck on crediting how practical poetry is when Palestinians live under such turbulence, though it provides glimmers of hope and the safe space for conversations that would have stayed buried under the mantlepiece rug, it allows the international community to feel. I instruct the young people to write about coffee as a warmup exercise. “I dislike the taste of coffee like how I detest the Israeli army who harasses my community,” a teenager writes. Every line is riddled with the presence of the occupation. How much longer will this ongoing trauma be allowed to continue?

Please support https://www.artistsonthefrontline.com www.freedomtheatre.com

about Shareefa Energy

Shareefa Energy is a poet, performer, writer, author, activist, educator, creative campaigner, workshop facilitator and arts and wellbeing practitioner of Indian and Muslim heritage from Leicester and London. She is the author of poetry collection Galaxy Walk. Her poetry is raw, honest and consistent against injustice. She was awarded with the UK Entertainment Best Poet 2017 Award, a nominee for the Muslim Women Arts & Entertainment Awards 2021 and for the Eastern Eye Arts, Culture & Theatre 2019 award by the Arts Council. 

​Her poetry has featured on BBC The One Show, Channel 4 and ITV. She has facilitated creative writing, poetry, storytelling and performance workshops internationally, from Palestine to Sierra Leone with schools, universities, academics, in immigration detention centres, with survivors of domestic violence and with those impacted by state violence.

Twitter: @ShareefaEnergy

Insta: @shareefaenergy

Shareefa’s Website: https://www.shareefaenergy.com

Since 2018, I’ve had many conversations in climate and environmental circles with organisations such as Julie’s Bicycle and Culture Declares Emergency and found that there was a part of the climate conversation that was missing. People were talking about self-care. Rest was a big feature but what was missing was a moment to just stop and assess what it is you need that looked like nothing at all. I decided to create a creative event entitled “The Pause”. 

I took to the concept of pausing our hectic lives to encourage a practice of taking a beat, a breath, a moment of inaction to calm the body and settle the chemical, electrical and hormonal charges that course through the body, before launching into the next flurry of action. Even if it was an act of self-care.

Image: Zena Edwards leading the workshop at The Pause Field Lab.

The day had a journey to embodiment and planned like this: 

1. We would watch a screening of “Can I Live?”, an hour-long film with a powerful blend of spoken word, live music,  movement and theatre written and performed by Fehinti Balogun
2. A post- screening Q&A. Lunch (which was delicious).
3. A poetry writing exercise and discussion in reflection of the film.
4. And last but by no means least, an experimental embodiment and storytelling session run by the incredible Stacy Makishi.

The writing and actor’s artistry of Fehinti and the imaginative production experience and skills of the theatre-makers ‘Complicité’ is the collaborative tour de force that brought “Can I Live?” into the world. This hour-long multimedia poetic film explores the tumultuous awakening of one individual to human-fuelled climate change, environmental disparity, and the looming ecological crisis. To the protagonist, Fehinti himself, it became increasingly vital for him to take meaningful action.

As we sat through this thought-provoking and fiery film, one fear or concern reared its head that resonated deeply with many of us: the fear of irreversible damage to our planet and the well-being of future generations. This film was a stark reminder that the consequences of climate change are not a distant future but a present reality.

Following the screening, we had the privilege of an engaging Q+A session with Fehinti, delving into the complexities of making a piece like this: as a person of colour, where does his voice fit in the climate change conversation; how do you get others especially friends and family to care as much as you do; what do you do with the anger at the politics around climate change and what can you do so you feel like you’re doing enough to be part of the solution? 

Because the day was titled ‘The Pause’, Fehinti was asked how he would pause. He spoke frankly about his own burn-out. His advice was to be vigilant about how much energy and passion you invest in collectives and movements overtly pushing for change. It was apparent that pausing gives space for clarity, to comprehend what your thoughts about the actions you have taken are actually and to allow solutions to come to you through your faith in your experiences, rather than striving to the point of an uncomfortable and unrewarding strain.

Lunch was provided and it was absolutely delicious!  And that is all I have to say about that. If you like your food fresh, clean, locally sourced farm-to-table food then take a look at their website – www.farmrj.com

Images: Fehinti Balogun in the Can I Live performance and at The Pause Field Lab Q&A.

I was leading the poetry and creative writing part of the day. I started with a simple embodiment exercise to encourage participants to ground themselves in the present. I asked them who they were without their job titles, without their qualifications and job status. I went so far as to ask them who are they without their friendship or family roles. This can be a tough exercise because people identify themselves with who they know, their bloodline and what they own. I asked them to put that all down and just be a human being in the moment releasing the gravitas of their roles and titles. I’d call this ‘extreme pause’, maybe? Because you are asked to go back to knowing that you are made of flesh, that belongs to the earth and that you are this ‘animal’ first.

My co-facilitator was Eileen Gbagbo. I met Eileen on an Apples and Snakes ambitious and environmentally conscious music and spoken word show Cece’s Speakeasy, upon which I was the artistic director.  The show’s aims were to highlight the impact of climate change on sensitive plants such as coffee and chocolate and use music, poetry, visuals and movement as a tool to raise awareness. As an emerging artist, I want to continue to work with Eileen’s maturity in her awareness and thinking processes around eco-themes. 

Our hour on this Pause Day was to inspire the participants to actively search for alternative narratives to the mainstream narrative of a climate apocalypse.

We started by introducing an expansive eco meaning of the adage ‘what if…?’ 

I shared an extract of a poem by Clauine Rankin – 

What if over tea, what if on our walks, what if

in the long yawn of the fog, what if in the long middle

of the wait, what if in the passage, in the what if

that carries us each day into seasons, what if

in the renewed resilience, what if in the endlessness,

what if in a lifetime of conversations, what if

in the clarity of consciousness, what if nothing changes?

Participants were then introduced to the free-flow poem entitled ‘what if’ and they were asked to imagine alternative narratives to what they had written on the flash cards at breakfast.

The results surprised them and poems did come out of the free-flow exercise.

What if I did not live in constant peril

How about I did not think, even just for a day, about everything

that is so obviously wrong with the world

Imagine if I just lived to be

What if there was currency for compassion

What would it look like?

They say that when things are free people actually take less

What if I did not live in constant peril

How about I did not think, even just for a day, about everything

that is so obviously right with the world

Imagine if I just lived to be

– T

Image: The team exploring play and imagination during The Pause Field Lab.

Stacy Makishi took us all to the next level of exploring The Pause. Not only did we explore some fundamental lessons in play and non-judgement, but the imagination muscle was given a gentle yet spirited workout.

We all surprised ourselves at how far we as individuals, with responsible jobs and burgeoning careers, can go into a state of play, an essential technique to process some of the hard stuff we have to deal with as adults in this moment in history.

By using random objects, we collectively and spontaneously improvised the story of an imaginary character and their made-up existence as a 21st Century imaginary friend.

As each person added a random item, the story evolved from sweet and humorous moments that warmed the heart to cameo moments that were tense and uncertain. Pretty much like life. And we did all of this with NO WORDS! We story-told as a collective with our bodies and the transmission of our intention.

Overall, The Pause was more than just about reflection. It was a reclaiming of head and heart space to really view ourselves as authors of the new existence we want to see, which includes empathy for the human who is more than what we can produce or consume.

And to end with Stacy’s storytelling exercise, we were able to bring completely uncensored and humane exploration to the creative space to pause in a way that felt like a gap in our usually packed diaries which is was filled with…. 

This blog post was created in partnership with Team London Bridge

About Zena Edwards

After graduating from Middlesex University and studying storytelling and performance at The London International School for Performing Arts,  Zena has been a professional writer/performance poet, curator and  creative project developer.

​She is known as a renowned award winning UK based poet of Afr-Carib-British heritage, however
she is also a polyglot, at home with collaborating with musicians, choreographers, and visual artists.
The list of acclaimed artists she has worked with include Theaster Gates, Ackroyd and Harvey and Akram Khan.

Each poem owes gratitude to other poems and poets that went before it.

Poetry is a communal, collaborative act. Sometimes we fall into the trap of spotlighting the individual, whoever’s creative genius steals our breath. And yet we know that everything exists in a continuum. Each poem owes gratitude to other poems and poets that went before it. No matter how solely invested in their own voice any poet or performer might be, everyone is inspired by someone or something.

Much of my work has been leveraged on the basis of this sense of connectivity, and how a life in poetry can involve cultivating the spaces that allow people to come together to write, perform, discover, express, facilitate, challenge, critique, and cross national or even international distances. Word Cup is one such space. 

THE HISTORY

I have a terrible memory for factual details, so forgive me if I skimp on the timeline. I can tell you with confidence that our first Word Cup was in 2006. As an independent artistic director and facilitator, I had been running youth slam programmes since the early 00s. Over roughly the same span, Apples & Snakes had evolved out of its long-established London base into an organisation with national connections. 

The core concept for Word Cup was a national youth poetry programme, bringing teams of young people together through a series of workshops in their respective locations to a final weekend celebration and showcase event. It was loosely timed to coincide with the World Cup, cycling every four years. How the football connection came about remains a mystery to me. Beyond a childhood fascination with Panini football stickers, I can state without shame that I’m one of those strange people who doesn’t have a football bone in his body. I lay the blame and praise for that particular aspect of the programme squarely upon Lisa Mead’s shoulders. More about Lisa Mead later. 

HOW IT GOES DOWN

Some aspects of Word Cup have remained pretty consistent over its varied iterations, but as with any living, breathing enterprise, other aspects have developed and shifted. Each time we deliver the programme, groups of young people meet in different parts of the country for a series of workshops with a lead facilitator (“poet coach”) and a supporting facilitator (“assistant”). Through these workshops, participants work on poems and performance, preparing for the final weekend.

The final weekend typically begins on Friday, with all the teams converging on our central venue. This year we landed at Manchester’s Poetry Library, set within Manchester Metropolitan University. Having surmounted the various logistical challenges that arise from cross-country travel, teams are shuffled into their first workshop for the weekend.

These workshops are designed to complement whatever participants have gleaned from working with their coaches, but also to cultivate connections that extend beyond their teams. Pairs from each team are grouped with other participants they don’t yet know. Friday’s closing event is a “Manager’s Match”, showcasing poet coaches and assistants for what they do as writers and performers. 

Saturday typically disappears in a blur. More workshops in the morning. Rehearsals and opportunities to get comfortable on the main stage before the main event. And then the main event itself. Each team gets to showcase two group poems, one in each half of the event. In previous years, Word Cup has been modelled as a youth slam, with judges, scoring, and prizes for the highest scoring teams.

Having supported and developed countless youth poetry slam programmes over the years, I stand by the impact those programmes can have. But I have no qualms about the way that Word Cup has evolved from a slam to a more relaxed celebration of what youth poetry can do. We didn’t have judges this year; we had celebrators (with many thanks to Shirley May, Danez Smith and Joelle Taylor). There was no spotlight on any one “winning” team. Completely unprompted, the audience (largely consisting of Word Cup participants, facilitators, teachers, family members and staff from various project partners), responded to each performance with a standing ovation. There was no singular victor. Everybody won. 

MOMENTS TO REMEMBER

I’ve already admitted that I have a terrible memory for specific details. But there are a couple of milestone moments that characterise Word Cup for me. The first, from a team that arrived at the Contact Theatre for Word Cup 2010. They thought at first they might not fit in or have anything to offer when they compared themselves to all the other styles and voices represented that year. When they finally took the stage at the final event, the chorus from their poem (“What are you to Dracula? You are just a snack, you are!”) reverberated throughout the venue and has continued to ring out over the years as evidence of the fact that there is no single, dominant vision of poetry, and that there is space for all voices in Word Cup. 

The second moment already holds a similar place in Word Cup lore, and the fact that I’m not the only person to mention it is evidence of how special it is. On Sunday, before our teams head back to their respective parts of the country, we have time to round things up. Some evaluation (as always needs to happen with programmes like this). Words of wisdom for each team from celebrators. Our last moment all together this year came in the form of an open mic.

A participant stepped up to share a popular song, but as can happen when emotions run high with all eyes on you, they faltered. A voice rang out from the audience, carrying the next line of that song. The solo performance became a duet. Two young people who hadn’t met before the weekend, two voices from different parts of the country, came together. They finished in strength. And provided a powerful reminder of what Word Cup is all about. Surmounting challenges. Supporting each other. Sharing something of yourself through poetry and performance.

LEGACY

If you’ve read any of the other blog posts in this Word Cup series, you’ll have picked up on a theme of legacy. Antosh Wojcik‘s journey from assistant coach to lead facilitator between Word Cup 2014 and Word Cup 2023. Rebecca Abbott‘s journey from young producer for Shake the Dust (another Apples & Snakes youth poetry performance programme) to creative producer at Suffolk Libraries; how she was able to create an opportunity for others to participate in the kind of programme she’d experienced and benefitted from a decade before. The young people involved have much to gain, but the halo effect is large and extends in beautiful ways. 

I’ve mentioned Lisa Mead, who in 2006 (when we began the Word Cup journey) was Apples & Snakes’ Education and Training Manager, and a creative producer herself. Since then, and under her stewardship, Apples & Snakes has grown to unparalleled heights, and continues to develop and deliver this vital, much-needed work. I serve as an artistic director for programmes like Shake the Dust and Word Cup, but it must be said that without people like Lisa, these programmes simply would not happen. 

Written by Jacob Sam-La Rose

About Jacob Sam-La Rose

Jacob Sam-La Rose is a poet, facilitator, programme leader, artistic director and editor. He’s been responsible for a number of renowned poetry programmes, most notably Barbican Young Poets, which he established in 2009 and continues to lead. Among other appointments, Jacob has served as the inaugural Poetry Fellow for English Heritage, Poet-in-Residence at Raffles Institution (Singapore), and poetry professor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His collection ‘Breaking Silence’ was shortlisted for Fenton Aldeburgh and Forward Poetry prizes and is studied as an A-level set text. His poetry has been translated into Portuguese, Latvian, French and Dutch. 

Photo credit: Naomi Woddis
Heading image credit: Amaal Said

Describe yourself in 3 words…

Playful, Enthusiastic, Sporadic

About Tatenda Matsvai

Tatenda Naomi Matsvai (aka 2tender) is  a facilitator and devised performance maker, working with spoken word poetry in theatrical and non-theatrical performance contexts. Tatenda’s work is mainly bio mythical, infusing their lived experience with myth, to challenge colonial cosmologies. Their performances are joyful, participatory, and multidimensional.

They are currently rehearsing their co-written show Hot Orange touring with Halfmoon Theatre in autumn 2023.

Tatenda’s work has won the Vault Origins award, been Offie nominated, and performed as part of Theatre Peckham, The Roundhouse Camden, The Cockpit for Voila Europe! festival and Between. Pomiędzy literary Festival (Poland).

Twitter: @MyNamesTatenda

Instagram: @tatendax

It’s a bold claim but it’s true, Apples and Snakes really did change my life. Reaching me just at the right time and showing me that poetry wasn’t/isn’t exclusively written in the drawing rooms of the privileged, that community work was not of lesser quality and that art really can change lives in a way that is more significant than my own experiences. 

In 2012 I was leaving the cosy confines of education and was lucky enough to secure a short-term position as a young producer at the Southbank Centre, working on ‘Shake the Dust’, a national poetry showcase run by Apples and Snakes. 

From this first role, I learnt so much about the practicalities of producing work. It proved to me that producing live work was scary and stressful and hard work but, most of all, it taught me that, when done right, the payoff was incredible. I don’t think I’d ever experienced Spoken Word before this, or at least not knowingly.

This new role was not only my first chance at producing but also my first experience of Spoken Word. 

I am not nearly eloquent enough to explain just how exhilarating and beautiful it was to see young people from such diverse backgrounds telling their stories on one of the most prestigious stages in the world. The sound of 1000 clicks running up and down the stalls and realising that this intensely personal story resonated with each individual watching from the darkness. It still gives me goosebumps. 

I knew I wanted to make work like this, celebratory, life-affirming, the work that gives a platform to voices that aren’t represented nearly enough. 

A bumpy road now travelled sees me working as Creative Producer for Suffolk Libraries and, in many ways, the work I do has a similar thread to the work I did with Apples and Snakes over ten years ago. It’s rooted in community, free to engage with and encourages a lifelong love of learning. 

One of the first things I did in my new role was to reach out to Apples and Snakes about collaborating. I was so delighted to be invited to bring a group to the Wordcup. Like ‘Shake the Dust’, teams from across the country would work with a professional poet to create spoken word performances to be performed at a National Showcase. 

We chose to run an intensive poetry weekend with Gainsborough Girl’s Group. A social group for teenage girls that is run at a small community library on an estate in Ipswich. Our first session, 4pm, Friday afternoon. A group of chaotic teenage girls, bribed into the space with promise of a McDonald’s shouted over each other to tell us all that they were the wrong group for this. They were rubbish at English. They weren’t very good at reading. They hated poetry. 

We were lucky enough to work with Yomi Sode, who guided these girls to find their own words and stories with humour, respect, and dramatic reading of Taylor Swift songs. 

Over the weekend we saw eye-rolling teenagers remove their armour and tell each other about estranged fathers, disabled siblings, worries about not fitting in and grieving loved ones. The space became open and raw and with it, our poets became celebrators.

We rehearsed over the next two weeks and before we knew it we were all packed up in a car, ready to join the other teams in Manchester.

I would be lying if I didn’t think the initial pull of this project was a trip to Manchester for these girls; staying in University Halls and a Friday off school. Yet, even seeing young people exploring a University setting was a highlight for our team too. On our first night in Manchester, girls in their pyjamas, each having a go at logging into Netflix in the communal living room.

“I can’t believe people get to live here.”

“I know… I thought people only lived like this in America”

The space that was created at Manchester Poetry Library was beautiful. Every moment was about celebrating and empowering each other. It’s remarkable how quickly teenagers embrace this, no cliques, no laughing at each other. Everyone was scared about performing and so everyone uplifted and supported each other. 

Showcase Day felt tense. There were a lot of last-minute notes, wobbles, and tears. Each time, young poets were crowded around and showered with encouragement and joy. When the groups had finished rehearsals, for the first time that weekend, the building fell quiet. The nerves were taking hold and the sound of excitable teenagers was replaced with catering trolleys wheeling across the space and the DJ setting up in preparation for the afterparty. 

The Leeds team had been teaching our poets the electric slide over the weekend and a few of the adults on the trip used this forced peace to lock in our moves in the foyer. The group of two became four, became eight. The DJ, now ready to soundcheck, blasted the opening bars to ‘candy’ which alerted everyone else in the building. Before the lyrics had set in every poet, teacher, young person and caretaker was part of a joyous flashmob. Dancing out their nerves amongst new friends. 

The Showcase followed in the same pattern. Nerves, courage, joy. Again I was reminded of how it feels to be sat in the darkness, the sound of 1000 clicks running up and down the stalls and realising that this intensely personal story resonated with each individual watching from the darkness. Each performance met with a standing ovation. 

I feel so lucky to have been witness to young people being heard and celebrated in such a way. 

Before we left for Suffolk, the young poets were invited to put their names down for a poetry open mic. Each performance was perfect. A young girl from Devon stepped up, she adjusted the mic to fit her small stature and began. Halfway through as she started to sing a line from Lost Boy, her voice cracked and her face crumpled. She turned her back to us, her shoulders sobbing. The room fell silent. 

From the back we heard the smallest, beautiful tune. Everyone turned to see one of our group joining the song. The room erupted and the two girls joined each other at the mic to finish their song, arms wrapped around each other.

 This felt like the perfect moment to wrap up a life-changing weekend.

Written and sent in by Rebecca Abbott, Creative Producer – Suffolk Libraries (The Suffolk Team)

About Rebecca Abbott

Rebecca Abbott is Creative Producer for Suffolk Libraries, a charity which runs Suffolk’s library service. We nurture children’s literacy, support vulnerable people, and promote wellbeing across Suffolk. Our libraries sit at the heart of the community, and we are nationally recognised for our work. 

Our team participated in the Wordcup as part of the community strand of Suffolk Libraries Arts and Culture programme.  

Suffolk Libraries Arts and Culture Programme is generously funded by Arts Council England. We were officially granted National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) status in April 2018 and the programme aims to develop libraries as accessible, creative community spaces. 

WORDCUP ’14 – ’23

The Woods of Writing

As a poet who has reached a decade into this line of life (I’d call it work, but poetry is something lived, isn’t it?) I have found myself reflecting on the journey, the path from Shadow to Poet Coach. 

Over this decade, I have facilitated poetry in schools, universities, care homes and art institutions, working in a space with many different folks who are all on their own path with writing. I’ve come to learn that a facilitator is a guide that we all meet on our respective paths; a guide that points out the interesting routes we can take through the woods of writing. It’s not our job to say which steps to take, more to encourage one’s curiosity at the possibilities of their decisions. Through this process of permission and risk, we connect and build trust to whoever we work with and owe, in part, where we end up further along the path. 

Apples and Snakes, their opportunities, empowerment, and advocacy for those interested in writing, performing and collaboration, are instrumental in showing me and guiding me along this path as a facilitator and in turn, furthering the possibilities in my life as a poet.

On Stepping into the Role of Shadow – WORDCUP 2014

The one benefit of an uncleared email inbox is it still holds my correspondence from 2014; a window in time that looks back to my fledgling poet-facilitator-self. In a thread, I am talking with Daisy Dockrill, a former Apples and Snakes project coordinator. She encouraged me to apply for the role of Shadow Facilitator on WORDCUP14, an inter-school slam taking place in London that summer. I was lucky enough to be selected and it was the first opportunity I had to work on a sustained, longer-term programme to deepen my understanding of teaching poetry and performance in schools and a chance to learn from an established poet. 

I was partnered with poet Indigo Williams who ran a writing club at St. Gabriels in Kennington. The writing club was a potent mix of students who absolutely wanted to be there and those who were challenging themselves beyond the expectations of their school. 

Each week I learnt the fluidity that a facilitator needs to address the complexities that young people face, how a session’s time can fall away so quickly whilst you encourage the young writer through their anxieties and build their confidence in taking their steps through the woods of writing. 

Being a stranger and a new face to the members of the club, I learnt how to mediate my presence, respect their boundaries, and started to get a footing on how to offer ideas and suggestions to them, encouraging the early awareness of receiving critique and feedback on writing. Having studied Creative Writing at university and participating on the Barbican Young Poets and Roundhouse Collective programmes, I enjoyed the challenge of reshaping what I knew so that it was accessible and inspiring; so that it could guide the way for the young writer, rather than meet some pre-conceived idea of what a poem should be.

Indigo was the perfect mentor in supporting my learning: setting debriefs post-session, modelling her different approaches and detailing what she had expected to happen versus what came to be in session. Her balanced method of encouraging these young writers through the trust they had built in connection, and then pushing their abilities with her understanding of poetic craft and performance continues to influence me. 

Part of the shadow experience is deepening your understanding of your own tools, so that they may be embodied once you’re leading sessions; every aspect of the WORDCUP14 programme reinforced this understanding. When it came to the interschool slam at the end of the project, I found myself in awe of the shared journey I, the young writers and Indigo had embarked on. As they brought their writing into the live setting and performed in front of other schools, I witnessed their growth and felt how far along the path I had come.

On Stepping into the Role of Poet Coach

In 2023, nine years later, the opportunity rises that I can contribute to WORDCUP23, in the role of the Poet Coch, working with Hampshire-based writer development agency ArtfulScribe and young writers from Hounsdown School. I’ve walked the path long enough to step into this role and this is a full circle moment of sorts – though the learning and journey continues.

What is humbling about facilitating as a Poet Coach is, the challenges and joy of working in the WORDCUP23 sessions are the same as when I started along this path with Indigo. The young writers require a similar level of encouragement and guidance, of openness and permission to risk and fail together – in order to then find the right shape and words for our poems. 

Writing group poems required us to set agreements with each other; all suggestions and decisions made in the writing were for the betterment of the poem, as opposed to us as individual poets/people. This nurtured a rich level of challenge and reward to our understandings of poetic craft. I found that this required a similar level of building trust with the young writers in the groups, so that we could carefully tread the woods of our writing and find the right words along the way. 

As the Poet Coach, I also felt the weight of responsibility to my writing and facilitation tools, of ensuring we reached checkpoints on the road to the national WORDCUP Celebration that had to be met. This further challenged my fundamentals as a facilitator and artist – I’ve always wanted groups to self-lead, to have as much agency in what they make as possible, as a way of understanding the creative process – but this was in tension with the idea that they needed to complete their group poems together and be at a point of sharing. I also had my own Shadow, poet Claire Hillier, to support too (though in this iteration of WORDCUP they were called ‘Assistants’) which further developed my practice – the responsibility of debriefing and guiding, of open-sourcing my knowledge and tools for someone else to learn and embody for their own purpose as a facilitator. 

Leading on WORDCUP23 empowered the opportunity to steer our direction along the path whilst doing my best to involve the group, Claire and our supporting teachers, in choosing the routes we took. These lessons are clear, joyful checkpoints in my own journey along the path as a facilitator.

At the WORDCUP23 showcase, I was humbled by how far the Hounsdown young writers had come after working with them for 3 months. We cultivated a fire and poetic eagerness in them that meant they were able to take on lessons from the development sessions across the weekend and reshape their group poems in the final hours prior to their sharing. Both groups gave the best performances of their work to date in their respective moments in the showcase and each young writer was a proud beacon of poetic light all the way home from the weekend in Manchester to Southampton.

As a Poet Coach, I felt my own poetic practice reflected in the group’s approach; that willingness to reshape what you’ve made in the last moments before sharing. It keeps the poetry live and charged! I felt that sense of pride that I had authentically shared my tools and approach as a poet and artist, that I had shown a path for these young writers to try. Their light will guide my next decade through the woods of writing.

About Antosh Wojcik

Antosh Wojcik is a poet, drummer and sound designer. His writing explores memory, time, heritage and glitches. His drumming and spoken word show, How To Keep Time was produced by Penned in the Margins and toured internationally in 2019, supported by Arts Council England. He co-wrote and sound designed the BFI short film ‘Alo’ with Xenia Glen in 2023. His poems have been published in bath magg, Anthropocene and anthologised by Bad Betty Press and Colliding Lines.

IG @_weirdtoday
Twitter @antoshwojcik

On a sunny Saturday 3 June 2023, we hosted our special Takeover and All Stars gig at the Roundhouse in London. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apples and Snakes in style, the day featured live performances, creative workshops, podcast recordings and talks. This epic birthday bash was topped off with our All Stars gig which featured some of the finest spoken word artists, beatbox masters and poets that Apples and Snakes have been proud to champion over the years.

The Takeover

The Takeover doors opened at 1.30pm and there was a feast of workshops, live poetry performances and open mic sessions to enjoy. The buzz in the Roundhouse was wonderful, wherever you went there was something happening. In the Studio, Poetic Unity, Barbican Young Poets and a live podcast recording with Yomi Ṣode and Malika Booker entertained the crowds. Heading to the Hub, this chilled out area featured yoga classes, inner-life drawing sessions and a voice bath meditation. The bar also got in on the poetry action hosting several open mic sessions throughout the day. Rounding off the Takeover day was a very special ‘In Conversation’ session with Joelle Taylor and Bella Freud, discussing the importance of poetry and protest.

The Studio line up sizzled as we heard from the freshest new voices including Cecilia Knapp, Polly, Medusa, Joanna Woznicka, Muzkaan Razdan, Ankunda, Kari Pindoria and Shayna Kowalczyk from Roundhouse Collective, Jayda David, Magero, Aicha Therese and Jerome Scott of Poetic Unity and Riwa Saab, Robin Park, Oli Isaac and Kiki Gilbert from Barbican Young Poets.

The Hub was the place for workshops and creativity and our thanks goes to Gemma Barnet and Rose Bird for their fab blended Yoga and Creative Writing workshop. Dom Coyote ran a soothing Voice Bath Workshop which went down a treat with participants and finally Bohdan Piasecki’s Inner Life Drawing session was loved by everyone who took part in this observational workshop that encouraged participants to draw out the internal monologues of it’s subjects to develop character based creative writing.

All Stars Gig

The Takeover day finished with the All Stars gig. Hosted by Jan Blake, the line up featured a mouth-watering array of poets, spoken word artists and beatboxers.

The main space at the Roundhouse burst into life as these talented creatives each took a 10-15 minute set and performed some of their classic material, all peppered with their freshest work. The result was an amazing evening that was a great celebration of the previous 40 years of Apples and Snakes and set the the path for the next 40.

Shout out to our amazing All Stars Gig line up: Joelle Taylor, Roger Robinson, Yomi Ṣode, Belinda Zhawi, Kat François, Hollie McNish, Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi, Sophia Thakur, Malika Booker, Zena Edwards, BREIS, Rakaya Esime Fetuga and the Beatbox Academy.

We have collated some of these great images into a gallery to download as a PDF.

Photo Credit: Suzi Corker (suzicorker.com)