There’s no such thing as a ‘slow reader’, just read books in your own time and don’t feel like you’re ‘too slow.’ On a similar theme, running is over-rated.
Describe yourself in 3 words…
Worried little mole
What inspires you?
People who don’t take themselves too seriously and do their thing with a lot of kindness and honesty.
Tell us about your worst ever gig?
A club on the seafront in the middle of the day. It was very dark with heavy bass music playing in between sets. I was the only poet amongst musicians and mainly just wanted a sandwich. There were about six people there and at least five of them were very hungover and potentially had just slept in the club after an all-nighter and woke up me pretending to be a bear as part of a poem. I was meant to be on twice but after my first set the organiser told me I had ‘probably done enough.’
That or a village hall in Norwich where I was booked to do my show and gyrated around a crowd of stone-faced seventy-somethings as I pretended to be the grim reaper.
What’s your number one poetry pet peeve?
Oh, completely not for me to say – some stuff is up my street, some stuff isn’t, but that’s the same for everyone!
Whose words do you love at the moment?
Neelam Saredia-Brayley, Harry Baker and Zena Kazeme.
What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
There’s no such thing as a ‘slow reader’, just read books in your own time and don’t feel like you’re ‘too slow.’ On a similar theme, running is over-rated.
What is an easy item on your bucket list that you haven’t done yet?
To have a bucket list that is literally just a list of buckets I have come across in my life. Maybe with a corresponding photo album.
Helen Seymour has joined Apples and Snakes since September 2022 as an Artistic Consultant. With a vibrant and sassy personality, we’re very much looking forward to having her as apart of the team. We’ll be sharing more of her work with us in due course.
In the meantime, get to know Helen more on her website: www.helenseymour.com
And here’s a short bio:
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 will be published by the Poetry Business in January 2022. You can pre-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.
Twitter: @lehenner
Instagram: @whathelens