I have AHDH and I love poetry and drawing. My mind bounces all over the place when I create which is a joy for stringing together wild ideas, but my mind hardly ever stops and when I’m listening to poets perform sometimes my head gets so full of bees that I can’t focus at all on what someone’s saying. Sometimes it feels like they’re speaking another language and nothing they say can penetrate my head.

A few years ago I realised if I draw while I listen, it tames my frantic mind and lets the poets’ words reach me. What started as a coping mechanism has blossomed into a beautiful extension of my poetry world and my place in this bustling UK spoken word scene.

I’ve loved writing poetry since my teenage years in the ’90s and, during the most artistically inspired times in my life, I’ve often slipped into the habit of writing a poem a day. This includes when studying at Drama School (2004) when touring a rock opera of Hamlet around the north of Italy (2008) and when I studied physical theatre in Paris (2012).

All of my adult life I’ve worked as an actor, animating and writing poetry in my spare time. I never shared anything I wrote and had no idea that the spoken word scene even existed.

Then, in 2015, I wrote 2 poems I was really proud of: ‘Jedi on the Metro’, and ‘Cous Cous’. I was shocked to discover my home town of Swindon had not only a gorgeous poetry community but also a great poetry festival every year too. Here are some Swindon Poetry Festival sketches from that time. You can see these here: [1] [2].

 

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I jumped in feet first, and quickly took to sketching poets as I listened, challenging myself to capture a poet’s essence in the 3 minutes it took them to share their truths with the crowd.

As time went by I got more and more adventurous and eventually treated myself to an iPad Mini. I started animating poets in Flipaclip and Procreate as well, the aim still the same, to work fast, doodling and animating in a just a few minutes to capture the essence of the poet and their words.

 

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I’d love to see more poets exploring animation in their work, and a lot of people don’t realise how easy it is to start. Anyone with a smartphone and a finger can do it, with all sorts of free and cheap apps available. FlipaClip, folioscope, Procreate and Rough Animator are my favourites. I also recommend getting a stylus. They’re super cheap and you can even make one with a cotton bud and some tin foil (just like this via YouTube).

Something that always troubles me is that I know that if I draw then it will look like I’m not paying attention. I want to give the performer my full energy and encouragement, but if I don’t draw and instead just pretend to pay attention, I’ll look like a great audience member but I often won’t have a clue what they’ve said. I try to sit at the back for this reason.

 

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As well as acting in other people’s shows, I also produce and tour my own one-person theatre productions. In the past 6 years, poetry, animation and video projection have become some of my favourite things to play with onstage. My work was developing wonderfully. But in 2020 calamity happened. Lockdown; Covid. All theatres closed. Tours cancelled. No more work for who knows how long.

When arts organisations started desperately asking “does anyone have any digital skills?!” my hand shot straight up.

Suddenly there were whole new avenues of art-making opening themselves up to me. I took a 10-week online course in motion design with the School Of Motion and threw myself into all manner of animation, illustration and poetry commissions.

I made a stop motion poetry film about being trans, performed a 15 minute spoken word set interacting with hand drawn animations, and made the world’s first fully animated poetry slam, complete with hand-drawn audience and guest judges.

My favourite project so far is a poetry video called Duvet Days that I made for Kat Lyons’ play Dry Season which explores early onset menopause. The poem explores anxiety, a subject I’m also very familiar with, and, as well as being a delight to create, it also got accepted at the prestigious Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Berlin.

Despite how much I’ve made I still feel like I’m at the dawn of my journey to figuring out how I want moving images and my writing to flow together. In early 2022, I finished a big tour of Too Pretty To Punch, my one-person show about trans solidarity, a show I’ve been touring since 2017. I decided to take a break from touring my own work while I create new things.

My current projects include writing a satirical young adult novel about a trans teenager who struggles through the apocalypse, an online animated sketch comedy series satirising the debates around trans issues, as well as slowly formulating ideas for my next touring spoken word show.

I’ve been running more and more workshops and mentoring sessions to help people add animation to their poetry and theatre productions and I look forward to seeing the fruits of these new styles of poetic expression. This feels like a time full of change and creative possibilities and I’m excited for what the future may bring, both for myself and for our community as a whole.

Edalia Day

Edalia is a transgender spoken word artist, animator and theatremaker based in Norwich. Trained at Lecoq and Alra, her spoken word is full of energy and theatrical flair and her theatre combines comedy, live music and interactive projection mapping.

After 10 years as an actor, she started writing and producing her own work in 2014 with In The Surface Of A Bubble, about a world of dreams and until 2022 she toured Super Hamlet 64, a one-person show about videogames and Shakespeare and Too Pretty To Punch, about celebrating trans an non-binary people.

Since lockdown started she trained as an animator and motion designer with the School Of Motion and has produced several successful projects combining Animation and Poetry, working with the Young Vic, HOME, Harrogate Theatre, Theatre Royal Norwich and Lost in Translation Circus.

Projects in development include: an animated online comedy series about trans people, a book about a trans girl’s diaries during the apocalypse, and a new show combining spoken word and a trans barbershop quartet.

Connect with Edalia

Website: www.edaliaday.co.uk | Shows and books are available online at www.gumroad.com/edaliaday
Instagram: @edaliaday
Twitter : @edaliaday

Photo Credit: Colin Potsig

This blog entry is part of Behind The Words – our project to highlight all walks of life in the spoken word and poetry scene. There is no one way to be a poet. There is no right way to be a poet.

“i hate having to share trauma with white people to be taken seriously. as a writer but also just as a person. like, is that the only way whiteness recognises me as a person? through pain?” – Chen Chen

The very first spoken word poem I ever wrote was on my experience of a lifetime of receiving racism and silent bystanders. It remains the only poem I’ve written on racism and I don’t think I can ever do another.

I performed it for about a year at different open mic events until I had to stop. It was liberating to write and perform the piece at first, but it quickly became deeply draining and very questionable as to who was now benefiting from this piece. The poem required me to pull rage and awful memories from behind the mental wall (which was blocking them out for self-preservation reasons) and serve them as entertainment for audiences.

After doing a poetry slam, I retired the piece as I realised having my trauma consumed and scored by non-East and South-East Asian (ESEA) people is actually quite horrific.

Since then, I’ve been performing at open mic nights before becoming a featured act at events, working with major organisations as an artist and so on. I’ve written about plants, space, quantum theory, love and other stories. In the meantime, I kept a lookout for other ESEA poets, hoping it wasn’t just me out here. In my first four years of poetry, I managed to find about three others.

It’s as though we don’t exist.

In 2020, COVID-19 related racism against ESEA people soared across the world. Reported hate crime tripled in the UK in the first three months and online hate speech shot up by 900%.

The media constantly used ESEA faces when reporting on the virus, stoking further racism. Over 30,000 people signed a petition demanding media to “stop depicting East & South East Asians in Coronavirus related media”.

However media outlets denied doing this and responded to activists with “’Your statement about using solely East and South East Asians in articles relating to COVID-19 in The Guardian is, frankly, wrong.”

Across the world, ESEA people were being assaulted or murdered.
And suddenly, poets like me were visible.

Corporations approached asking us to write about racism or traumas and issues we face. Corporations hover around minority groups like vultures. They’ll want stories or spoken word pieces for their ads, campaigns, shows etc but provide little to no support or pay.

ESEA people are held as the model minority – hardworking, quiet and servile. Corporations expect you to behave as such. They imagine you’ll tell the full depth of your experiences to fit their brief exactly. They won’t pay you much, if anything. You will just be so happy for the opportunity, for the publicity and for having your voices heard on such a big platform.

They will arrange for the poem to be performed for audiences that do not look like you. To retell is to relive and so, with spotlights in your eyes on a stage, you will relive your trauma and make your fellow community relive theirs when they see it. The corporation and their intended audience will hear your stories – it will be shocking, heart wrenching, they’ll say “I can’t believe that happened to you”! It will be cathartic for them, they get to quietly pat themselves on the back for having never done something like that to people like you.

And they get to walk away. There will be no well-being systems set up for you, no support, no check in. If you’re lucky there will be a thank you email. We are expected to put our experiences back in a box until we can mine it again for another piece of work.

We are fed into systems that Other us and fails to see us as people. We are expected to serve our trauma as entertainment. We don’t exist most of the time, and when we do we can only speak on racism, as though we come into being to be attacked or farmed for our stories.

They want to hear stories about racism and how hard it is without doing anything to change their own systems.

We are placed as either writing about race or deliberately choosing not to. We’re pressured to monetise our trauma, as though this is our only value and the only thing we can be the expert on.

This is why community (that’s intersectional with cross-community allyship at the centre) is so important. When we’re together, we make a safe place to be an individual without being picked out to represent an entire race. We’re stronger together, able to back each other up, share knowledge and we make it harder for corporations to exploit or undercut anyone.

I’ve founded BESEA Poets, a collective for British-based ESEA poets, and we currently stand at 25 members across the country. BESEA poets have always been here and been extremely good at our craft, but are rarely platformed.

We’ll write about what we want, when we want. We’ll only write about trauma if it helps us, and if we actually want to. We’re made up of multifaceted and layered individuals who don’t represent an entire race or ethnicity. If companies want to work with us, they’ll need to trust us and not infantilise us by demanding we tell our stories in a certain way.

We have always existed here, and we will continue to do so.

About Christy Ku

Christy is a Multimedia Creative. Poet. Actor. Workshop Facilitator. Photographer. Anti-Racism Consultant:

“I work across many different art forms, specialising in poetry, acting and performance, and workshop facilitation.

I’ve made poetry films, spoken word tracks and theatre shows with organisations such as the BBC, Sky Arts, and the Barbican. I founded BESEA Poets, a platform for British based East and South-East Asian poets.

Currently, I’m working on my debut poetry pamphlet. I was once rejected from having a poem baked onto 200 loaves of bread.

Alumn: Barbican Young Poets, National Youth Theatre, New Earth Actors Academy.”

Connect with Christy

Website: christyku.co.uk

Social media: @kukadoodles

Join her newsletter:  christyku.substack.com
BESEA Poets: www.instagram.com/beseapoets  or drop me a line on hello@christyku.co.uk!

*Source for opening quote: www.instagram.com/chenchenwrites

Image credit: Colin Potsig.

Back to Behind the Words Project Page.

I’d love it if people could read the word ‘disabled,’ notice what feelings come up and then challenge them. Try it now. Disabled poet.

I think I did have a sense that the village hall tea-party, in the middle of Norfolk, on a sunny afternoon, might not be ‘my audience’ but then, I didn’t want to judge. Maybe they’ll be bang into it, who am I to say? But when it got to the bit where I was pretending to be the grim reaper rapping about death while gyrating around their tables, stacked with cucumber sandwiches, I knew for sure that they weren’t for me. Or rather, I was not for them.

Earlier on in my show, where I was pretending to be a badger, a woman got up and left. Maybe she’s going to the loo, I thought. She did not come back.

I can never be certain why this happened. Clearly, the organisers had got the wrong end of the stick about what my show ‘To Helen Back’ was like. I should have known that when I arrived, as outside the hall , they had put up a big banner saying ‘TO HELEN AND BACK’.

Ah. Right. Sure…

I mean, it’s actually ‘TO HELEN BACK’, so when you say it, it sounds like TO HELL AND – never mind.

I had spent ages working on my blurb for them.

Spoken word/comedy/performance art (does performance art sound too pretentious?). When I put ‘performance’ I meant the fun kind. The kind where people put swimming caps on and spend eight minutes pretending to be a worm. If there isn’t a word for that, then there should be. I’d even performed a small section of the show for them – although, not the grim reaper bit, admittedly. So when they booked me, I had thought they had a good sense of the type of show I did. But somehow that got translated to a sweet little show ideal for an afternoon tea party (with cucumber sandwiches!)

After I performed, I overheard two women say it ‘really wasn’t what they were expecting’. And, while I actually quite like that kind of feedback, there is something I will never really know about the feedback I receive. In this instance, I wonder whether somewhere along the line, the fact that the show was marketed as being about ‘sickness, health and what it means to recover’ – along with myself being a disabled poet and the show being described as ‘funny’ – that this all conflated to an understanding in the organisers head, that my show was, somehow rather ‘charming’.

The sweet little disabled girl talks about hospitals with a smile. Awwwh. Maybe that’ll get in the paper.

That’s the trouble, you know. If I’m not trying to dodge the old-fashioned, incorrect assumptions about what ‘poet’ means (i.e. Shakespearean infused haiku about a leaf in wind) then I’m trying to dodge what people think ‘disabled’ means.

And I don’t want to not say I’m disabled, because there’s nothing wrong with being disabled, and sometimes, I want to talk about things like being in hospital, there’s not enough visibility given to disabled people, so hiding it doesn’t feel like the right fit for me.

(I should definitely say, for record, it’s an individual choice. No one should have to talk about their health if they don’t want to).

But the world is still an ableist place, and assumptions are rife. So if I manage to dodge words like ‘charming’, I can quite easily get hit with ‘a bit depressing’. ‘Urgh no, not disability. I can’t read a poetry book about that. Not another metaphor about being unable to climb the stairs. I can’t cope. I LOVE stairs. It’s just going to bum me out.’

And this is my least favourite assumption, because I feel so ‘othered’ by it.

So ‘what a sad little life, Jane’d.’ There might be some sad parts, but what book doesn’t have sad parts? There are also funny parts and uplifting parts and weird parts’ – urgh, see? I’m getting tired now.

Having to explain I’m just as much a human as anyone else. YAWN. I’m sick of it, to be honest.

I’d love it if people could read the word ‘disabled,’ and notice what feelings come up/they have…and then challenge them.

Try it now.

Disabled poet. Sad girl writes from behind the window looking at friends playing in the snow.

There, we see it now. It’s out. I’m not having a go at Wilfred Owen, but/for? giving school kids a lot of poems about sad disabled soldiers, but this hasn’t exactly been great for the disability movement. Maybe the curriculum could balance it out with some disabled joy?

But anyway – I’m getting distracted. The first reaction – the snow one – is over.

So now, maybe you can realise that actually, you? have no idea what a disabled poet might want to say. Maybe you can realise that actually, you haven’t really heard from a disabled poet before. Or maybe you have, but guess what? We’re not all the same!

Remember: Human. Different experiences, different lives, different perspectives. And yet – and here’s my favourite thing about poems – you can read a line from someone from a completely different life, living in a completely different body, and BOOM, it hits you dead centre.

Here comes that swell of the heart, beyond all otherness, and you think, ‘God, yeah, I get it. That is exactly how I feel.’

About Helen

Helen is a word-artist-spoken-poet-human performance-person. Her work mainly focuses on health, hospitals + surrealism. She is known for mixing off-beat comedy with dark subject matters. Helen is a disabled artist who is proud to be contributing to a more diverse arts sector.

Her debut poetry collection, The Underlook was published by the Poetry Business in January 2022. You can order it here

Helen has been commissioned by Apples and Snakes a number of times, writing new poetry and performing to new audiences across the UK. Helen won Gold in the Creative Futures Literacy Awards and was longlisted in the Outspoken Poetry Awards 2018. She has also facilitated poetry and writing workshops a wide range of ages and abilities.

If she wasn’t doing this, Helen thinks she’d be a pharmacist from the past or a grave digger, because she’s quite obsessed with death but in a charming way. She’s made also made some short films and been on a few podcasts.

In other news, she’s a sucker for Art History, the Curzon Film Podcast started in her kitchen, and she was once awarded a badge for swimming 100 metres.

Helen is currently working with Apples and Snakes as a Creative Access Consultant. She’s helping the team here do some work in moving forward with equality, inclusion and diversity. She has been delivering workshops and 1-1s with artists to help them build ‘Access Riders’ so that artists can highlight any specific access requirements they need to venues and other organisations upfront. Her work has been praised highly by participants and we look forward to working with her for some months to come!

Connect with Helen

Website: helenseymour.com
Twitter: @lehenner
Instagram: @whathelens

I’ve been practising as a poet and workshop for over 10 years now, and alongside this work, I have also been commissioned to write for a variety of different projects. Each with its own trials, tribulations, and triumphs! This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a series of things that have stood out in my memory of my commission writing experience. I hope in some way in works out to be helpful.

THE COMMISSION 

A commissioned piece is when you have been offered or applied to an organisation to write a  piece that communicates the message of that organisation. The work usually takes form as a one-off performance, or a piece for social media or a website. For example, a commissioned piece can range from writing for a blog, exhibition, podcast, or a performance at a conference or festival. They usually pay quite well, some give you residency like opportunities, and time to carry out research with access to materials, space and experts.

FINDING A COMMISSION 

The world of commissioning can sometimes be a minefield, and it can be difficult to know where to start. It is easy to feel others are just lucky enough to have opportunities thrown their way, and somehow all the commissions are not reaching you. But I have found that commissioned work is something you have to look for. And I belong to several mailing lists, including the Apples and  Snakes basket, where opportunities to apply for such roles are listed.

I also look through the Arts Council England jobs list to see if anything that interests me is on offer. Twitter is also a useful tool, and I  follow a few people who post opportunities that will lead to a writing commission. Very rarely have I been lucky enough to have been contacted directly and offered a commission, or another poet has suggested me for a project.

CHOOSING A COMMISSION

It is one thing writing when you are inspired, or what tickles your fancy, and actually writing to commission. This is why for me I always try to choose topics that a) I know a little thing or two about, b) it interests me, even if it is not, it’s something I have not explored before. c) be clear on what it is that I want to communicate in the piece, and check that this aligns with what the  commissioning organisation want from the work.

KNOWING THE OUTCOMES OF THE COMMISSION 

It is important to really read through the project information, and pick the brains of the commissioner. And believe me, it is possible to get it very wrong! In the past, I have embarrassingly gotten the brief very wrong. I ended up writing a rant about something completely not what the commissioning team wanted (sometimes, we as writers have something niggling away at us, and we cannot help but write about it).

Commissions don’t work like this. I am used to writing from my own free will and it is possible to forget that commissions can be quiet restrictive. That is where you need to get imaginative. How can you bring your voice and interests in to overlap on what the brief outline is. It is really important to get a clear idea on what thoughts/ feelings the organization wants and similarly what the readers/ audience to walk away with.

THE SMALL PRINT  

When taking on a commission, make sure you have a clear timeframe and outline of how much this project will take to deliver. Commissions offer bigger fees than performance alone, which can be very attractive. However, I have worked on a project where the commissioning team kept adding extra meetings and site visits to the timeframe of the project. This meant that the initial sum I was offered was not a realistic amount for how much work was required from me as a poet on the project.

Once I started to add the extra meetings, and travel/ accommodation costs, the commission was not as well paid as I had initially budgeted. It is really important to have a clear breakdown of what the commission is worth, how much for the research and written piece, if there is a performance fee, and how many meetings or workshops you may be required to deliver. Have this in writing via a contract before you commit to doing the work.

ARTISTIC LICENSE & ETHICS 

Know from the get-go, who owns the publishing rights to the end piece. Does it belong to you to perform again, or does the final piece belong solely to the organisation?

Know also what you as a writer want to gain from the commission. Does this topic tie in with your work? Is the final piece something you can use in a future collection or submit to a  competition? Does the commission give you access to resources that you would otherwise not have had access to? Are you able to work with other exciting artists, and push your artistic practice in a way that you have not been able to in the past? Are you able to sell merchandise at the final event? Are you happy to be affiliated with this organisation and do their ethics line up with your sense of fairness and justice? These are a lot of questions to ask youself, but they are very imporant questions to ask. Take time thinking these through and getting that information upfront.

And finally good luck and have fun with any commissions you may have lined up in the future. Remember this can be a fun space where you can do something different to your usual work!

About Shagufta K Iqbal

Founder of The YoniVerse Poetry Collective and Kiota Bristol, Shagufta K Iqbal longlisted for the Jerwood Compton poetry fellowship, is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, workshop facilitator and Tedx Speaker.

Described by gal-dem as a poet whose work ‘leaves you validated but aching – her narratives are important, heart-wrenching and relatable.’ Her poetry collection ‘Jam Is For Girls, Girls Get Jam’ (one of Burning Eye Books bestselling collections) has been recommended by Nikesh Shukla as ‘a social political masterclass.’

​Her poetry film ‘Borders’ has won several awards, and has been screened across international film festivals, including London Short Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival, Athena Film Festival.

She sits on the board for Cape Farewell (An Art Response to Climate Injustice), and is currently writing her second poetry collection and a debut novel.”

Connect with Shagufta

Website: ko-fi.com/shaguftakiqbal | www.shaguftakiqbal.com
Producer ‘Borders‘

Photo credit: Colin Potsig
This blog is part of Behind The Words.

I’m a part-time English lecturer working in Further Education (FE), teaching GCSE English Language resits to learners who didn’t get the grades they hoped for the first (second or third) time around. I didn’t plan on being a teacher. Although this role does scratch the giving-back-to-my-community itch, I do intend on it remaining part-time. It offers a touch of security after straddling the poverty line my whole life, but my writing time is as necessary as a heartbeat.

My first experience as an educator came when I graduated from a TV Production Degree 2005, living (barley living!) in London. Struggling to find paid employment within the industry (a whole other blog post), I was becoming quite good at forging paper travel cards, changing any dates with 5s into an 8s to stretch their use. Stealing toilet roll from my part-time job at the cinema was a regular, and eviction notices began to pile up.

I accepted an offer to provide summer holiday and after-school media workshops in the Unity centre in Stonebridge to help motivate and inspire young people to see their full potential. We made music videos, comics and posters on topics that impacted their lives. It was there that I realised how important it was for these youths to have a young black woman from a similar socio-economic background leading these workshops.

Fast forward to 2012, as member of Nottingham based poetry collective Mouthy Poets, I transferred my experience of devising media workshops to facilitating Mouthy Youngers and various spoken word workshops. Until one day, a bold deputy-head saw me perform and insisted that his school and English department needed me to help make Literacy/English accessible and interesting.

I told him that I had no teaching qualifications, that I was dyslexic and that I was never going to wear a two-piece suit on a daily basis. He said, ‘perfect’ colluded with Mouthy Poets founder Deborah Stevenson and made me a fictitious role, Spoken Word Educator.

For the academic year 2013-14, I was churning out four spoken word workshops per day, four days per week. Every English class of every year group in the school saw me at least twice per term. I facilitated an after-school creative writing group, a poetry film group with the alternative provision students, and I had weekly sessions with the SEN, EaAL classes. In addition, with help from other members of Mouthy Poets, we organised an in-school week-long poetry festival culminating in an end-of-year showcase where students could perform, screen, or exhibit their writing to parents, family members, and careers. I was exhausted, but my heart was full, I wept for a whole day.

I occasionally see ex-students from this school whilst going about my everyday life. They stop and call out ‘poetry lady, remember me?’.

Only last month, a young, broad shouldered, baritone-voiced man approached me in Wilko’s and demanded that I came to meet his son and girlfriend who were at the bus stop outside. The young dad, now 23, remembers the time he was 15 with detention, when I snuck him into an after-school poetry group where we spoke about hip-hop, gardening, and the importance of being different. He remembered how he came for a couple of sessions without being ‘in detention’ and wrote poems. He said ‘Miss, you were one teacher that made me think I could do something’.

He hasn’t pursued a career in literature, but it was never about that. It was about empowerment, giving young people a sense of value, and the communication skills to help navigate the challenging, joyous, and awkward moments life presents us. He’s actually working as a waste disposal person because he was determined that his boy would not end up in care without knowing his dad like he had. That he would not follow his friends into crime.

He wanted me to know that he remembered our discussion about daring to be different and that he reads stories to his son so that one day he’ll like words and books. I watched this young man get on the bus with his family, returned to Wilko’s and bought pocket sized tissues to dry my face.

Following on from my Spoken Word Educator role, I continued to facilitate creative writing workshops across the East Midlands. I worked in an Italian summer school teaching English combining it with drama and arts and crafts to soften the blow for students and for me. I also worked for organisations such as Writing East Midlands, First Story and the National Literary Trust.

After a series threats of being summoned to court for unpaid council tax, I signed up to a teaching agency for supply work. I’d sneak in the odd performance poetry exercise when the promised lesson plan was missing or too dry. I gained a permanent part-time job as a teaching assistant at a further education college within the construction department, helping mainly boys from deprived backgrounds complete their course- I was so far removed from poetry but saw poems in everything.

Bully

blood surges to his face
beetroot and boiling

his jugular enraged
pythons his throat

he steps closer
until his coffee breath

can be tasted
on Jamal’s tongue.

Jamal is 15
out of class

in the corridor
one minute after the bell

and Mr. Cockren is teaching
him how to communicate

I longed to develop my own writing. Writing was a thing I did in the gaps between earning money to pay bills and I felt like a fraud- advising workshop attendees to develop regular writing time and not doing it myself. So, I enrolled in an MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths and commuted down one to London day a week. I had legitimate time to write, deadlines to ensure I completed and some credibility as an educator. Often, qualified teachers would side-eye me in the staffroom with a ‘but what does she know about teaching?’ look. They may have tried to be very subtle and quiet, but I saw them.

As a TA, I was awarded the opportunity (or punished) to sit in on a whole heap of English lessons. I could see that a good number of teachers just couldn’t connect with the students. Quite often, I could see that some teachers were frightened of the students – not because they were displaying aggressive traits – because they were so far removed from where the students are from. There was no common thread, no empathy.

Students from all backgrounds would turn to me; Black, working class, neurodivergent, brightly clothed, wide mouth, broke pocket, Jamaican patois bending tongue- Ioney for help. I realised this is what education needs. Diverse classrooms need diverse teachers; not just for the Non-White students, I believe all students benefit from knowing that a broke-pocket Black women can ‘run tings’ in the class.

Even though the MA I completed at Goldsmiths induced panic attacks and unearthed past educational trauma, I went on and applied for a PGCE in Post Compulsory Education at Nottingham Trent University. Before I even started I was offered a job as a part-time English teacher at the college where I was a TA.

Being a part-time English teacher in further education means that for three days I work to live. It means for the first time in my life I’ve been able to cover all my bills, to buy a selection of food, cleaning products, and buy non-essentials like Fab ice lollies. The rest of my week I dedicate to my writing projects (when not caring for sick parents). I try to focus on one or two tasks each week.

I’m aware that my writing has been pushed to the margins whilst studying and carving out an educator career and can often feel ‘behind’, but I haven’t quit. I’ve had to make a concerted effort to sign up for workshops, to enter competitions, to apply for opportunities and keep my writing life ablaze, it’s exhausting, but essential.

I currently have a residency (July -September) at New Art Exchange where I’m researching and developing new writing culminating in a sharing in November. I also have a short story about to be published in Glimpse and an anthology of Black British Speculative fiction, published by Peepal Tree Press in September 2022. I’m still working toward my first collection of poetry.

I haven’t had a holiday. I probably won’t get one this year. I’ve been working straight from the academic year into artist mode over the summer returning to teaching in September, this is the reality. Down time and rest are the next things I need to factor into my life, advice welcome…

8 ways to keep writing whilst being a busy teacher/educator

1. Try out the writing exercises you plan to teach.
2. Read the extracts you plan to use in class/workshops and respond to them, this could be a voice note, a list, a free write- respond to it in any way you want, cuss it, praise it, question it.
3. Write a haiku about one experience in your day.
4. Write a list poem pivoting around one aspect of your day, this could be list of things you forgot to do, excuses, a list of commuters on the bus/tram/train to work.
5. Describe one student or colleague in detail, pay close attention to mannerisms, habits, accents and phrases they say, how they dress, how they eat- don’t be a weirdo though, stalking is a crime, respect peoples’ privacy & know boundaries.
6. Keep a journal, write how your feeling, thinking, hoping, questioning, loving
7. Sign up for writing workshops. Set yourself a goal, one per month/ term whatever, but sign up, not to produce a master piece just have something to look forward to.
8. Send work to competitions and magazines. Set yourself a goal one per quarter or term- you never know! I did this whilst studying for my PGCE and two of my pieces were selected to be published, it came at a time when I was seriously questioning my writing ability so was really invigorating.

About Ioney Smallhorne

Ioney, performance poet, writer, educator, a Hyson Green, Nottingham native. Her artistic practice is ignited by her Jamaican heritage, fuelled by the Black British experience, and smoulders with womaness.

Shortlisted 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 Jerwood Fellowship 2017, short listed by Caribbean Small-Axe prize 2016.

As a Spoken Word Educator she works across the East Midlands encouraging people to harness the power of poetry to realise their own greatness. Co-lead facilitator for Gobs Poetry collective in Nottingham.

For 2022, Ioney was the New Art exchange, resident artist July-September, where she was developing her project, Jamaica and Her Daughters a collection of poetry and prose. Her short story, First Flight, will appear in the first Black British speculative fiction anthology, Glimpse, published by Peepal Tree Press.

Connect with Ioney

Website: ioneysmallhorne.wordpress.com
Instagram: @ioneyidioms
Linktree: linktr.ee/IoneySmallhorne

This blog post is part of Behind The Words. Photo credit: Colin Potsig.

People are afraid, admiring and dismissive of it all at once. I have seen, time and time again, equally talented new poets — one serious, one comic — given unequal opportunities as they try to break into the scene. I’ve seen the best poet fail to win slams (this, of course, happens all the time as we know but still…) because their fantastic poem was humorous whereas their opponent’s was about cancer (hard to beat, really). I’ve also watched some of the best poets I know praise comedic artists but then fail to suggest any funny poets when asked to share their favourite writers.

This is not to say that comic poetry and poets aren’t celebrated. In fact, many of the best spoken word artists today are effortless in their ability to jump from seriousness to laughter, often in the same poem. People at the top aren’t the issue though — in emerging and established artists, humour and comedy in poetry seem to have an uneasy relationship. Funny is useful to whip out occasionally as something different, but all too often seen as simpler, easier writing. This sort of makes sense at first.

How can an artful metaphor about nurturing and childhood compare to a surreal setup about the sex life of a Dr Marten?

But dwelling on that thought, and after many failed attempts to write even a half-funny joke, it turns out comic poetry might actually be more skilled than imagined. (In answer to your question – squeaky, and with a surprising lack of shoe polish).

Historically, this undervaluing of comedy in poetry doesn’t make any sense. How many of us were introduced to verse through funny poems for kids? (I was put off lying for life, honest…) And truth be told more people probably know a rude limerick off-by-heart than any noble and serious pieces.

There is some room for hope. Humour isn’t always left out entirely as comedy is usually, at a minimum, acknowledged by even the most stoic of poets — not in their writing, but in the in-between bits during performances. A well-placed joke lightens the tension of a tricky piece and provides much needed contrast to hold an audience. Half an hour of serious poetry without even a glimpse of a wry smile is a lot to endure, and most acknowledge this through their chatter. Only half a step more and people might put some of it in their poems too.

It’s tricky to dissect why this might be. I know that for some people it’s to do with risk-taking.

When you start as a writer you probably only do one type of poetry well, so broadening your work to include comedy is terrifying, particularly when humour feels much more binary; either it’s funny or it’s not.

Admittedly, there’s some truth in the idea. If a serious image in your poem is weak and needs improving, you’ll generally find that out later when talking to a friend; if your joke is bad, it is apparent right there on stage, as the room stays stubbornly silent and your joke flops weakly to the ground. However it is a strange irony that poets, whose work is frequently associated with vulnerability, find performing comedy makes them feel more vulnerable than those gut-wrenching truths we have come to associate with spoken word.

It might also be something else. We learn to see things we laugh at as safe, harmless. I know this only too well and used it to my advantage growing up. If you can get people to laugh at your queerness, or otherness, you can survive. The laughter I induced by referencing my identity neutralised any of the many threats I posed (like converting anyone who came within five feet of me into a homo). When it comes to writing, however, we want our poems to be powerful and laced with meaning. We want them to move and challenge and surprise an audience. If they’re too busy laughing at something flippant I threw in about jizz, then how can they remember to be moved by the brilliant line before about unrelenting grief?

Of course, it doesn’t really work like this. I find the most powerful poems are the ones that play with a message and bring humour in as a tool to lighten something dark, or even draw awareness to the truth that quite often awful things are really quite funny. There is a dreadful sense of comedy that can come from death or sexual assault or homophobia or any number of things that shouldn’t be funny, but then that’s what it is to be this contrary, complex, sack of chemistry and to laugh when we shouldn’t.

It’s also a case of where and who. Sometimes, comedy is one of the strongest things you can do to get some types of audiences on your side, but this is very place and people dependent: A room of slightly tipsy students — great! A room of raucous middle-aged people — even better! A room of very serious poets… not ideal. That’s certainly something I’ve noticed: People, real people (you know, the type that make up audiences) seem to love funny poetry. Sometimes it is the poets — the gatekeepers who book and judge competitions — who might bring with them a lot more baggage about what a poem should be, and not, say, whether they enjoy it, that might be the problem.

And it’s a lot to miss out on — humour brings so many gifts with it. An absurd poem allows an idea to be dissected in a thousand unlikely ways. Often, the ability to break into the improbable, and suspend your reality, can be both disarming and freeing. In fact, one of my favourite things about comedy is that a joke can trick you into laughing at something you feel uncomfortable with, and therefore make you more comfortable with it. Conversely it can also surprise you with an instinctive laugh, and then make you feel uncomfortable for finding it funny. Most of all, humour can remind you that you are human. For me, at least, that’s one thing that poetry tries so hard to do — to try and reveal what it is to be human — and how can poetry do that properly with this crucial half of itself stifled and ignored?

What can we do to be kinder to comedy? Well, for a start, the same bit of advice that we all learn when we begin writing: listen. Give humour a chance. Don’t just laugh and then move on. Relax into the joke, marvel at the ingenuity of its construction, and reward those who tried something new and clever and brilliant. After that, maybe, sneak a few jokes into your own writing. Until it is impossible to go through any poetry night without some belly laughs. Until more funny poems win those haughty spoken word prizes. Until people recommend funny poets without any caveats (“their stuff is a bit silly though”). It won’t ruin poetry, I promise — only finger-clicking does that — it’ll just make that ineffable thing we try and poke into being with our words, all the more great and sweet and brilliant.

About Tom Denbigh

Tom lives in Bristol with an obscene number of books. Detailing the queer experience alongside tales of friends and strangers, Tom’s poems toy with myth, devilish humour, and absurdity to portray the bizarre and brilliant in the everyday. Outside of writing Tom has a PhD on roots and soil erosion and works in climate change science.

Lastest book: …And Then She Ate Him

“The scope and depth in this collection is astounding… magical in all senses of the word.” – Keith Jarrett

In his debut collection, Tom Denbigh’s wickedly beautiful writing holds up a distorted mirror to the world. Deftly weaving the queer experience alongside tales of friends and strangers, Tom toys with myth, devilish humour and absurdity to portray the bizarre and brilliant in the mundane. Imagination is brought to life in this unique collection that is thought-provoking, insightful and startlingly joyous.

Twitter: @tom_denbigh
Instagram: @tom_denbigh
Website: tomdenbigh.co.uk

Photo credit: Colin Potsig. Back to Behind the Words.

Who am I? I am a poet who writes about things that matter to me, so I like to write about culture and identity. I am a North East poet and a British Bangladeshi. I am a new mum and a young mum. I like to tell stories through my writing and the workshops that I facilitate and deliver use poetry as a form of expression; whether that’s expressing your identity, or expressing a story, or a feeling, or an experience.

My poetry journey began when I was growing up in South Shields; back then poetry wasn’t really a “thing”. My sister and I were always watching poets online and figured all the cool people were in London or down south somewhere. We wanted to get involved in this world and so we decided to put our own money together to host an event and invited all these poets to come up.

At this time, we didn’t know much about funding or how to apply for those kinds of things, so we just did it ourselves. It turned out to be a really really good event, it went down well with our audience and I ended up really inspired. Eventually, I plucked up the courage to record something that I had written and share it on social media, I think it was Facebook. At that time in my life, the response that I got was just what I needed – it was so good. Listening back to the piece now I cringe, but at the time I was overwhelmed by the support and started to feel like I could work on my craft. It was around then that I was writing more and telling more people about my poetry.

I was originally quite hesitant to tell my family about my work, I’m South Asian and sometimes it feels like if you’re not a doctor or a lawyer, it’s not good enough.

However, when I did start talking to them about it more, I realised there was no need to be scared as they were so supportive – I even found out that I come from a long lineage of poets! For me, that cemented that this is what I am meant to do, I am meant to be a poet.

Life threw me a curveball when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, my direction changed and my plans refocused. During my pregnancy, I was quite poorly and then when she was born I literally felt like a walking, talking, breastfeeding machine. I felt like I had completely lost myself. I was then just a mum, I wasn’t anything else or anyone else and that was really, really difficult. I had therapy to get me help me get back to where I wanted to be emotionally and mentally, and then I realised that the only thing that helped me stay connected to who I was was my writing. I wasn’t performing or facilitating like I usually do but I was still writing here and there. When I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about things, I would write it down and almost talk to myself in my writing and it became an outlet to express myself or however I was feeling. Some of the writing I’ve never looked back on but I was able to just get my feelings out.

When I was going through this I was never physically alone, I had so many people around me. I had my family – I come from a huge family – and my husband and all of my in-laws. I definitely wasn’t alone but I was alone in my own mind.

It felt like even though everybody was so supportive, nobody could really help me get back to being myself and poetry helped me to reconnect with who I am.

The thing is with writing, you can pick up a pen and just do it regardless of what else you have to do most of the time, and that versatility helped me to connect with it and stick with it. I eventually had to accept that I wasn’t going to be the old me again, I had to accept and love the new me who I was becoming.

My daughter is a part of me now and having her and being with her has influenced my writing. I actually began writing to her before she was born, I wrote her a piece called Dear Darling. When I was pregnant, we didn’t find out if I was having a boy or a girl but I just felt so strongly I was carrying a little girl which is why I wrote that poem. I was anxious about bringing a human into the world as I know how cruel this world can be. As a minority, as a woman – I’ve faced my fair share of difficulties in the world and I was nervous and wondering how I would look after us both. So I wrote to her, I write to my little Safaa.

When I write now I always think about what kind of message I want to portray, not just to my daughter, but also to other children and young people growing up. Before becoming a mother, I didn’t really feel the need to think about that, it was more just about what I wanted to write; but now I know my daughter will grow up and look back at her Mum’s writing – what message do I want to give her? When you become a parent you become a role model, and that is always in the back of my mind.

Dear Darling

About Tahmina

Tahmina is a British Bangladeshi, Newcastle based spoken word poet, creative freelancer and young mother. Poetry has been a significant tool in Tahmina’s life, it gave her a voice at a time where she felt voiceless. Now through her workshops Tahmina aims to pass on those very tools to others. 

Tahmina has performed at various events, poetry nights across the country and selected for the prestigious BBC Words First programme. Also presented her poetry radio show on Fast FM for two years running, hosts her own Open Mic poetry night called Strictly Spoken and has been awarded the ‘ABC Arts and Culture Award’ for 2018 and 2019. Tahmina uses her poetry as a means to encourage positive change, her writing is generally influenced by identity, culture, social events and life as a young mother.

Follow Tahmina: Instagram | Youtube

Photo credit: Colin Potsig. Back to Behind the Words.

I know a lot of other poets feel, as I did, that whenever they first encountered the world of poetry, they had found their tribe.

I had glimpsed my tribe before. I found them in the amateur drama groups I joined from being a teenager. They were in the green rooms of the stand-up comedy gigs where I dissected how the night had gone with the other open mic-ers, and later to other pro comics. But it wasn’t until I found the other quirky people who cared deeply about words and stories that I really felt I belonged. Other people like me that had a strange mixture of anxiety/fear/lack of confidence about communicating alongside a strong urge to express themselves to fellow wordsmiths and audiences.

We were not really mainstream sort of people. Maybe we’d get called odd, weird or quirky by others, but in the open mic nights above pubs, at the tents in festivals or drama studios in arts centres, we found somewhere we could connect with others and feel a sense of power and choice. A space we could truly express the word-passion and other interests we had. We would be accepted, heard and understood in ways that resonated deeply with our loneliest core and which healed the parts of ourselves that had always felt alone- isolated –  like we didn’t fit in. 

I’ve been interested for a long time in how other people ‘process’ words, images and feelings at different speeds and in different ways. It seemed important to try to understand this about audiences or the children I worked with when I’d parachute into a school to run a performance poetry or comedy workshop. It became obvious that poetry could reach the parts that other art forms couldn’t reach for some kids, when a teacher would breathlessly say of one of their students “I’ve never seen them so interested in something before – they were like a different person!”. 

I could see that some performers played a lot with the sounds of words and created textured pieces which pulled on an audience’s emotions. Others loved puns and clear narratives or quiet, still pieces that drew others in. I thought how this was probably a lot to do with how they processed the world. My quick, impatient brain meant I made poems buzzing along with words and ideas which seemed to wake some people up and excite them. Meanwhile, they were just ‘too much’ or too irritating for others. I learned not to take this too personally.

Working people out in this way was also important in my personal life. I would puzzle over how some people were so quick and adept at picking up body language and nonverbal cues. I’d be the one watching a film asking “how did they both know they wanted to kiss each other at that exact moment!”. This may have explained my very unsatisfying dates of course… I noticed that whereas I could read a page of a book hyper-quickly and have finished it by the time someone else was on the first paragraph, it always took me a while to work out what the pictures on toilet doors meant. Did they mean anything other than the standard male and female outlines? I could feel my brain working slower than other people’s when it came to the visual. I began to realise that not everyone would enter a room full of people and experience an overwhelming cacophony of visual, auditory and other sensory stimuli, all coming in at once. For me, this meant needing to step back or get into a quieter space in order to make sense of it all and filter what was happening.

But I also knew that most people weren’t trying to work out how different people processed the world. They were categorising people by whether they were introverts or extroverts, happy or sad, anxious or easy-going simply by whether they liked or felt comfortable with them or not. Most people, I think it’s fair to say, expect that other folk experience the day to day world in pretty much the same way as they do. 

Finding a word for these differences has felt like a massive relief. In 2017 I found quite a specific word for some of the ways I think and experience the world differently to the majority (autism) and it’s been very useful and would be a whole other blog post. Another word that I suspect applies is ADHD  which explains all those quick, buzzing poems. (And, I’m currently loving the new word for the many of us who have characteristics of both – AutDHD).  

But the one that resonates most for me when it comes to describing how different people’s brains experience the world differently – and which I think is a particularly useful word to know when thinking about why the world of live poetry is so hospitable and accepting to many of us who haven’t fitted in elsewhere – is neurodiversity. This comes from the idea of biodiversity.  Just as nature benefits from as great a variety of flora and fauna as possible, so humanity benefits from as great a diversity of brains as possible. We need the big picture thinkers and the small details people, we need the abstract dreamers, the concrete ponderers and those who combine the two. We need people who get obsessed by words and will spend hours finding just the right one for something, and those who would much rather be wrestling a woolly mammoth and can spot the “Where’s Wally” in a millisecond. 

Neurodiversity can just be an umbrella term for conditions such as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Tourettes, dyslexia and acquired states like PTSD, depression, anxiety and dementia. But it can also be an activist movement (see here for an interview with Nick Walker who came up with this idea) . A liberatory one that recognises the creative potential in those of us who see and feel and speak (or not) the world differently. I would argue that live poetry has always provided a radical space of neurodivergence and I am proud to be part of a wave of people who are now making that explicit.  

Image credit: Colin Potsig.

Follow Kate:
www.katefox.co.uk
Twitter: @katefoxwriter

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