When you started working with Apples and Snakes about 20 years ago, you did a lot of work as one of our poet educators as well as making performance work for children and young people – how did this grounding in performing poetry for children help you develop your written work for these audiences? How do you use this within your written work?

There is nothing quite like standing in a school hall or classroom or a theatre space being stared at by a tonne of eager young faces wanting to be entertained. It’s terrifying and exhilarating. It’s also a wonderful space to hone your craft. In those early days I had plenty of poems and exercises that did not work, I failed a great number of times. Sometimes I would start a poetry writing session with a plan and then half-way through I would realise that I had exhausted all of my ideas – the kids had worked far more quickly than expected or perhaps weren’t as engaged as I hoped. I’d find myself inventing an activity on the spot. Some of those “on-the-fly” activities I still use today, they worked and were honed through repetition as I realised what kept the kids engaged and what didn’t.

Those early days as a poet educator for Apples and Snakes became a theatre of evolution. I had help of course. Through Apple and Snakes I had the pleasure of shadowing Francesca Beard at The British Library and seeing other greats like Malika Booker and Jacob Sam-La Rose work their magic learning and growing as I went along. Those lessons have informed and inspired a great deal of what I do now, teaching me what young audiences are hungry for, what displeases them, what thrills them and what gets them hooked. 

What made you want to write Poems Aloud?

Poetry comes to life in that shared space between stalls and stage, there is something primal in hearing a voice lifting up to the heavens to share carefully curated words.

Through Poems Aloud I hope to encourage more young people to lift up their voices and to feel first-hand the benefits that lie therein: the increases in confidence, the welding of bravery and the solidifying of joy. 

Poems Aloud is all about fun and getting stuck in. What’s the funniest moment you’ve had working with poetry and children?

I think it’s rare to have a day in a school where there isn’t a moment of joyous laughter- comes with the territory. I often run an exercise where I get the whole class to walk around the room reading their poems aloud all at the same time, as you can imagine the classroom becomes a cacophony of sound. I then shout “FREEZE” and then challenge them to continue reading but this time using a happy voice, they continue reading and now the sound is loud but very happy until I shout “FREEZE” again and suggest: an angry voice/a chilled voice/a robot voice/a witch’s voice!/ a silly voice. Each iteration often leads to students rolling on the floor laughing at their own voices and the strange sounds issuing from their classmates’ lips. 

Your book is beautifully illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett, how do the illustrations compliment your work?

Daniel’s illustrations really do leap off the page. They are poems in themselves and I think his use of colour is amazing. The vibrancy of his images makes you want to lift the poems up and shout them out. But he also is able to show great tenderness and sensitivity through his work.

I’m thinking here of his spread for the poem This Bear, a poem about a bear being released into the wild after a lifetime of captivity. Daniel’s spread shows the bear from behind gazing up into a beautiful pink sky and it’s like you can hear the bear’s sigh of relief to be free. 

How did you take the initial ideas of Poems Aloud into print and how long did this take? Did you start off with a single poem and were asked to write more by the publisher?

The book took the best part of a year to put together. I began by thinking about the different performance techniques I wanted to share and then writing poems that would best highlight those techniques. For instance, I knew I wanted to write a poem that would be read quietly and get progressively louder. With that concept in mind, I started to think about subjects that would suit the performance and that’s how I came up with the notion of a poem about a radio being turned up when a favourite song plays. 

What are your top 3 tips to encourage children to enjoy reading and writing poetry?

Value their voice and their experience. Let them know that the things they are interested in, whatever that may be, is ripe material for a poem be it computer games, unicorns or Pokémon! And that their opinions and their take on things can also make great poems. Maybe they want to write a poem about their favourite football team, or why they think they should be able to eat cake for dinner or why adults should do more about climate change! 

Give them a notebook, a beautiful notebook and a fun pen. I love stationary and there is pleasure in using different coloured pens and pencils, I have used novelty pens that look like skeletons that box! Pens that vibrate, pens that are glittery, pens that light up and flash.

The act of putting pen to paper should be a fun experience and very little is more fun than writing in a beautiful book with a brilliant pen. 

Allow opportunities for new experiences, invite them to make notes whilst visiting a gallery or a museum or a theme park or the local park or simply a walk around their local streets. Take them on a local adventure exploring local streets you’ve never been down before. It’s amazing how different your local environment can look from a new perspective and this of course can fire up the imagination. What lurks behind the library? Where does that alley lead? Where might that footpath take you?

For any aspiring writers of children’s poetry what’s the one thing you wish you knew when you started writing for kids?

That there is a need for more published children’s poetry. If I had realised that I would have gone knocking on the door of publishers much earlier. That said, when I started out there was a belief that poetry doesn’t sell, which of course is nonsense. Like anything, books that are well marketed and promoted and believed in and, of course, are good, will always sell and a lot of that can be done on the enthusiasm and passion of the poet. Are you willing to read your poems at the local library or bookshop? Do you have ideas for writing activities based around your poems? Have you shared your poems at any poetry events? All of these things are something to think about.

Obviously apart from you – who are your top three poets writing and performing for kids?

Oh gosh that’s too hard so I’m going to say six! 

I love hearing John Agard perform he has such a commanding prescence. 

John Hegley always surprises with his words of fancy and delight. 

Valerie Bloom always makes me stop and think with words that paint pictures. 

Matt Goodfellow’s poems and performance style has beautiful heart and honesty. 

Julia Donaldson is a complete delight to watch her stories are simultaneously songs and poems.

Ruth Awola’s poetry is beautiful and powerful and sweet and sincere. 

What’s next for Joseph Coelho?

A great deal of writing, I have some exciting projects coming up which I can’t wait to share across the age ranges with a new Luna book with Illustrator Fiona Lumbers, another Fairy Tales Gone Bad story with illustrator Freya Hartas and of course more poetry including another collection with illustrator Daniel Gray-Barnett called Smile Out Loud, filled with happy poems. 

Joseph Coelho is an award-winning children’s author, performance poet and playwright based in London. His debut poetry collection, Werewolf Club Rules, was the 2015 winner of the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award. His second book, Overheard in a Tower Block, was shortlisted for the 2018 CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award and is longlisted for the 2019 UKLA Book Awards. Joseph features in the BBC Teach ‘Understanding Poetry’ online series.

His work has poetry and performance at its heart, drawing on over 16 years’ experience running dynamic creative literacy sessions in schools. He aims to inspire young people through stories and characters they can recognise.

His most recent work, Poems Aloud, is now available from your usual book stores and retailers.

Follow Joseph: Website | Twitter | Instagram

Image credit: The Bear – taken from Poems Aloud, illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett

I get asked a lot about the relationship between poetry and painting – if and how the two cross over, why I’m drawn to both.

Having worked with both artforms for most of my life, I feel I should have a succinct and profound response to offer. But I don’t. Instead, what usually follows is some thinking out loud with the absence of any neat conclusion. Which would not be an inaccurate description of either artform, come to think of it. One thing I do feel sure of though is that there is something shared between the two that draws me to both, and that link is more than an interchangeable list of technical choices to be made or ignored. 

It can be no coincidence that many painters are also poets or great readers of poetry, and vice versa. 2019 saw an extensive exhibition of William Blake’s artwork at Tate Britain; Tracey Emin’s exhibitions are rarely devoid of her famous neon statements, poetic titles scrawled across the bottoms of her canvases, pages of handwritten letters and stories; David Hockney is well-known for taking inspiration from poets such as Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens. The list goes on. And it begs the question, what about these two artforms means they so often appeal to the same mind?   

When I recall the exhibitions and poetry collections that have stayed with me most in recent years, it’s not the individual pieces of work that first come to mind but the feelings they evoked in me. Marlene Dumas’ The Image as Burden at Tate Modern, I’m now shocked to realise took place way back in 2015. This surprises me not because of the somewhat terrifying speed at which time has passed, but because of how frequently I still recall it and how alive my reaction to it continues to feel. I can say the same for Emin’s A Fortnight of Tears (2019) at White Cube. I made three visits and cried each time. As I write this, I’m reminded of the wonderful Maya Angelou quote: 

‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ (Maya Angelou)

It’s beyond question for me that for many more years to come I will continue to recall these exhibitions and their paintings for how they made me feel. And I have the same deep sense of attachment when I think of Mary Jean Chan’s poetry collection Flèche, Sylvia Plath’s Arial, Ella Frears’ Shine, Darling, Seamus Heaney’s North… 

On the walls of the Dumas exhibition, alongside the works of art, were short pieces of text, statements about the paintings written by Dumas herself. One such statement read:     

I would like my paintings to be like poems. Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off. […] Poetry is writing that breathes and makes jumps and leaves spaces open, so we can read between the lines. (tate.org.uk)

It’s this ability to create space and hold it open that is, in no small part, what draws me to both poetry and painting. There is a sense that the artwork does not only exist in what is presented but also in what is not, that it transcends the page/canvas and continues somewhere beyond, somewhere just out of sight but not out of reach of feeling. 

It strikes me that the artforms’ shared ability to create this sense of another dimension perhaps lies in the shared nature of their languages, one that is highly visual and economical. It’s here that the power of suggestion and, in turn, imagination come to the forefront and, thus, the poem/painting remains open; the reader/viewer is invited to move within it, fully experiencing it for themselves.

In this way – as Dumas said, through leaving space ‘so we can read between the lines’ – both artforms discourage their audiences from being passive bystanders. The poem/painting is a door left ajar, an open invitation to step through, and go to work finding something more. Exactly what is found is nuanced by whoever comes to it, by their imagination and lived experience of the world in which we each exist. In this sense, poems and paintings are also living things, forever shifting and evolving, and, as such, they are always surprising; entire movies disguised as stills.

For as long as I can remember, I have found a sense of home by stepping through the countless doors that poems and paintings have offered. Not necessarily the archetypal home of comfort and shelter, but a place of recognition, of connection to something human that surpasses language in the literal sense, written or visual. I find that it is here, in this place, that the experience becomes bodily and the poem/painting can be felt.

Alice Frecknall is a poet, short fiction writer, and fine artist. Her debut poetry collection Somewhere Something is Burning is published by Out-Spoken Press (2021), and available to order here.

Her writing was shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry 2019 and the Lightship International Short Story Prize. Her work has been published online by Out-Spoken and has appeared in print in a number of anthologies, including The Stinging Fly, Butcher’s Dog, National Poetry Anthology, and Lightship Anthology. Alice has an MA in Creative Writing, is a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alumna, and member of the UniSlam Post-Emerging Cohort. 

www.alicefrecknall.com 

Insta / Twitter: @alice_frecknall

Photo credit: Suzi Corker

When we talk about artists we often talk about individuals, people toiling in isolation but how much does community matter to you and your practice?

Yomi: It matters. When I premiered COAT at Roundhouse, I was also doing COAT Sessions with emerging artists. They’d perform after COAT for the audience as a kind of, “If you like my work, how about you take in the works of these folks”.

Tobi: That’s where I came across Gboyega [Odubanjo] actually.

I’d never negate a community approach because it’s all I’ve ever known.

Yomi: Sick, that group; Gboyega Odubanjo, Aliyah Hasinah, Shade Joseph, Marvell Fayose, Rue Gumbochuma, Abu Yillah. That opportunity’s important to the group; the Roundhouse came across Shade that night, which led to her doing her scratch there the following year. That’s what happens when you occupy a space and try to build community. If that’s not nurtured or worked on the scene’s going to be docile, insular. It’s not going to open the floodgates to people who have great work to share. What’s your take?

Tobi: I’ve always been a big fan of poetry. I always talk about how grateful I am to be accepted into the poetry community. I feel like I always say that after a Jawdance! I also feel this community houses more intergenerational conversations, which I’m grateful for every time I sit and chat with Roger [Robinson]. There’s no other space in which I have an older person, other than my Dad, that I chat to like this. I don’t know how to work alone. I can’t do it. I physically can’t do it. Community has always been a massive thing to me. I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly if I wasn’t immersed in the community; it wouldn’t make sense for me to want to champion the artform without understanding the reasons behind why people do this work in the first place.

Yomi: I’d never negate a community approach because it’s all I’ve ever known. There wouldn’t be a BoxedIn without community. I’ve always wanted to be going to gigs, supporting people, pushing them online – I enjoy doing it. It’s nothing forced, I enjoy going to support people.

Tobi: I remember the first open mic I ever produced at Battersea Arts Centre it was such a bad event! Theresa Lola came and it was the first time she’d read her work out in public, I think. And she started this poem and I was like, “Who is this person and why is she at my little open mic on a Monday in South London?!” We met each other again years later, and it came full circle. You see these people you met and started out with years ago doing great things now.

What does winning the Jerwood mean to you? What opportunity does it offer?

Yomi: There’s a blue-sky thinking with this so it’s almost a case of what don’t I ask for? I’m so used to working within frames. Their approach is; tell us what you’re interested in and we can try and support you with it. I’m doing Arvon in August, that’s the first official thing I committed to. That was scary, it’s £750, which is scary – I’ve never spent that amount on any course. Ever.

Tobi: It’s an investment in yourself.

I feel like there’s something – as Black people – which is like an inherited, historical thing. You work as hard as you’ve got to work and there’s all the suffering and the pain but nothing good is meant to come of that. So when it does we’re like, “I don’t know what to do with this now”.

Yomi: Right, but I was nervous in doing so. And I felt like I wasn’t deserving of doing so – a slight imposter syndrome situation. I was just like, “are you sure you’ve got the right person here?” Part of me thinks, don’t think like that, just focus on the work you need to do. But also, there is the imposter syndrome. Maybe I don’t deserve this, maybe there’s someone who deserves it more. My head in the last 3-4 weeks… it’s not where it should be. It’s going to move to a better place. I’m not used to this much attention. COAT was definitely something, but this is a different beast.

Tobi: You know what? I feel like there’s something – as Black people – which is like an inherited, historical thing. You work as hard as you’ve got to work and there’s all the suffering and the pain but nothing good is meant to come of that. So when it does we’re like, “I don’t know what to do with this now”. Because I know that I’m meant to work hard, I know that I’m meant to push myself, but in the back of my mind I’m not thinking I’m doing that for something good to happen, I just know that I’m meant to do it. I dunno, I think that has an historical context, and in the way we have to operate in society. And so it’s hard when something good happens to celebrate yourself. So it is really hard when something good happens to celebrate yourself and say, “of course I deserve this, I worked really hard”. For us it’s like you’ve got to work hard regardless of whether something good is going to happen or not. That’s just life.

Yomi: Inherited from our parents?

Tobi: Yeah, especially if you’re first generation. Your parents have come to this country from another place, you have to work your arse off. It doesn’t matter if there’s something guaranteed at the end of it. You just have to do that. Whereas other people are allowed to have that foresight of: “I’m going to do this, this and this and it’s going to get me that, which is what I really want. That’s what’s going to make me happy. So, when I get it, of course I’ll celebrate it because that’s what I was working towards.”

Yomi: But then it’s a thing of – if you get to that point it’s deemed as arrogant. American’s don’t care. They’re more like: “I’m deserving of this, this is what I’ll take.” And I’m like, at what point do I need to register with myself that I’m deserving of this?

Tobi: When you were talking about community and paying it forward – this is that being paid forward to you. People nominated you. Jerwood is your community paying it forward to you.

Yomi: Oh gosh! Can we talk about you and your appointment at Bush for a bit? What’s the job there?

Tobi: My job there is to present artists, read scripts – they’ll ask me for my opinion on things. It’s that level of agency that I’m not used to. So, it’s scary… to be in a position in which someone is asking for your opinion and your opinion has consequences.

Yomi: How does it differ from producing spoken word?

Tobi: Theatre’s a different industry in which the fight to get something on is gruelling in comparison to getting booked for a gig. I’m not saying the fight isn’t there and it’s not difficult in spoken word, but for a theatre organisation to invest money and time in producing your work… it’s huge. There’s so much of a community in spoken word; I can book certain people and know others will benefit from that too. The amount of people who want their work to be produced by theatre companies and the amount of money available to do that, it’s wild… there were 900 applications for the Bush’s open script window this year. The odds are wild. It’s really hard to think of that and to be in that position. The honest answer to ‘how do I get my play produced?’ is I don’t know. There isn’t a system that every institution follows. There’s no one system, different theatres are interested in different things. But yeah, the appointment felt really weird. A lot of people have been excited for me but I haven’t been excited for myself – I’ve been worried! I also felt imposter syndrome massively with being nominated for and then winning it [Stylist’s Inspiration of the Year Award for Black Ticket Project]. I was like, “this should feel good, and it doesn’t!’

Yomi: How do we fight that? ‘Cause in my heart of hearts, I know I’m good at what I do. I read one of my poems back the other week and I was like, “Yo! Is that me?!” So I have those proud moments but that dissipates, but at the same time I’ll make all the room for others to fully feel good about their achievements. I won’t gas up myself, but I’ll gas you to the end of the world and back!

Tobi: I feel like a large part of me coming to you and saying “big up yourself!”, is that it’s important to instil that in each other. Yes, I want you to say out loud, “I deserve this thing!”

Where do you think the current resurgence in spoken word has come from and where can it lead to?

Yomi: That insta poet thing yeah, I’d like to think there was some kind of shift when Rupi [Kaur] came into frame. I don’t know if that made people think they could try it too. Social media has definitely done something via YouTube and Instagram. There will be people who have their poet that they like, that they’re inspired. There are templates of poets they can see and aspire to: Hollie [McNish], Suli [Breaks], George the Poet… all of those people. I’ll always feel like there are pockets of poetry. There are all these different facets.

I’m waiting for poetry’s first NWA group

Tobi: I’d definitely say George the Poet was a moment in the resurgence. It felt like that was a moment when a whole new group of people were like, “Oh, maybe I can do this”. I started to see more people writing and performing off of the back of his presence. And also, it pushed the idea that being a poet is cool. It used to just be dead white men you saw in your AQA anthology, now you’ve got the Sulis and Georges. And it’s cool now, whereas before it wasn’t. You do find some wonderful people who would never have considered themselves poets ever before. Poetry is evolving, whether it’s the insta poets, the poetry films, music that feels really exciting. It’s become more democratic in terms of who can get involved, but there’s obviously still the hierarchy of what people think is good, bad, “real” poetry.

Yomi: Words First that raised the profile to 1Xtra. I think evolution can only make it grow into something more. I’m waiting for poetry’s first NWA group! But how do you access new poets?

Tobi: Online and going to nights is the main way. It’s hard to find the time to go to everything though, and to feel some kind of cohesiveness between all of these different events. I don’t know how many of these events share audiences, and that’s really interesting.

How do you know when an opportunity is yours to take?

Yomi: I don’t! If the nominations to apply to Jerwood hadn’t come in I don’t think I’d have applied. Arts Council, I didn’t apply to until 2017. Some people have been applying for years. I don’t know though – it’s a tough one.

That made me think: f*** it, I’m applying for everything.

Tobi: Something that was a big turning point for me in the first year of my apprenticeship: I had a teacher who was throwing out statistics and she said that most women are only likely to apply for a job if they meet more than 90% of the criteria, whereas most men will apply if they meet 60% of it. That made me think: f*** it, I’m applying for everything.

Yomi: For me now, it’s the kids – it’s knowing that I need to start taking these risks otherwise there’ll be a famine happening at home if I don’t! So I need to get a move on. Worst case, I don’t get it, at least I know I tried. They might be my kick-up-the-backside to go for something. I started doing more magazine submissions this year. I’ve just gone for it, because what’s the worst that could happen? It’s a difficult process but doing it makes it a little bit easier.

Tobi: Yes, the more you do it, the more you’re able to do it. It’s like a muscle you exercise it and you start to understand the process.

How do you stay motivated, what factors enable you to persist as creatives?

Tobi: I feel like my main plea to myself is to not do things that make me unhappy. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the process will be perfect, but I won’t go into something knowing that it’s going to make me unhappy. I say yes to things because it’s something I feel passionate about. That’s a driving force. People are also my main motivators; I can feel like crap all day and I see one person and that changes things.

Yomi: I always want to say yes to things; I wonder if I’ll burn out. One thing in regards to Jerwood is that you don’t have to say yes to everything now because this is here to help out, but I get that niggly “I want to get involved because it sounds cool.” I invest in things not just because of the pay but because it’s a new experience, a new landscape, I want to explore. But it’s not necessarily money, it’s the experience of trying things out. But now I know I could say no. I need to be aware of my own limitations, which I ignore all the time.

What’s your aim as an artist?

Yomi: To write work for discussion and not for solution. I don’t want to create work and people think I’ve come to save the day; I want to create work to provoke. To stir a conversation to happen. I don’t want to create work that is an answer to itself. I don’t ever want to feel like I want to save the day with my work, but I want to feel like it’s a contribution to a different thinking. And you, what’s your aim in the work you’re doing?

I just want to see people thriving.

Tobi: I really don’t know; I feel like everything that I’ve done so far has had no strategy, it’s just been me trying things. To think of myself having an aim, an overall aim, I don’t know… I just want to see people thriving.

I’ve curated a list of 5 performance poetry shows (from within the last 5 years!) that blend with other art forms wonderfully well.

The influence of other art forms on performance poetry is vast and diverse and mouth-wateringly rich, so picking 5 that combine art forms really well was a challenge, more so than I first imagined. Where does performance poetry end and theatre begin? I found myself pondering. What I came to was 5 artists who at some point have been described and have identified as ‘poets’ and who can deliver a cracking story, or indeed turn the idea of storytelling on its head!

These 5 poets have also had a personal influence on me and are often mentioned as an inspiration and influence on the South West poets I work with.

1. Dry Ice – Sabrina Mahfouz combines dialogue and accent to create such detailed characters that it’s hard to believe she is one woman or that she could create such depth of character with only a few minutes of writing. Dry Ice was the first play I saw where poetry was given the same space as theatre, with sublime staging, expert direction and strong punchy writing, it was a game changer for me.
2. Schlock! – Highly skilled at vocal gymnastics, Hannah Silva applies choreographic practice to both body and tongue, dancing with soundscapes in this dramatic show. Hannah explores language in a physical realm, using sign and through cut and paste methods; the effect is evocative and deeply thoughtful.
3. The Yellow Show – The godfather of surreal spoken word stand up, Rob Auton, cleverly combines comic timing with sparse and repetitive language simultaneously creating surreal yet mundane imagery.  In the Yellow Show, for example, the Grapefruit has never shone brighter!
4. Above the Mealy- Mouthed Sea – Like a warm cup of cocoa aboard a choppy sail boat, Jemima Foxtrot’s poetry play combines poetry, voice and song to create a heartfelt story of self -discovery laced with lullaby’s and tinges of folklore.
5. Let them eat chaos – It’s hard to write any performance poetry list without mentioning the high priestess of hip hop poetics but Kate Tempest’s Let them eat Chaos, is a striking example of ‘showing’ not ‘telling’ a story with a fierce mind altering urgency, it’s an hour after which you will never quite be the same.

And the best shows coming out of the South West

It wasn’t enough for me to write one list! Here’s my top 5 South West performance poetry shows that are well worth a watch

Sunked – Exeter’s answer to Rob Auton, Chris White’s spoken word comedy play about the Titanic is sprinkled with whimsical imaginative writing and even includes a Celine Dion ode whilst touching on the more serious question of class divides.

SEXY – writer, poet and burlesque performer Vanessa Kisuule’s debut play explores social and cultural concepts of sex appeal whilst shinning a light on her own experiences. With cabaret influences it features some sick lip sinking, great dance moves and various stages of undress.

One Foot in the Rave – An autobiographical poetry show by Alexander Rhodes  which follows the poet on his journey through a childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness to the hedonism of the 1990s club scene and features a banging soundtrack curated by Alexander who was also a D.J.

SPELLBOUND – Being the True Tale of a Reluctant Witch Unable to Escape Her Destiny.  Spellbound by witch, goddess, poet, comedian and singer Jackie Juno, is a courageous coming-of-age tale, Peppered with poetry, visuals and music.

Jeremiah – Rap Storyteller and theatre maker Jack Dean (Grandad and the Machine) brings us the incredible true story of the much misunderstood Luddite rebellion, featuring an original score and live band. Bursting at the seams with energy and visceral wonderful writing, the combination of live music and rhythmical storytelling are compelling.

These are all artists playing with Spoken Word as a medium and expanding the possibilities of what it can be, blurring the boundaries between comedy, theatre, cabaret and spoken word.

First Published October 2018