Creative Lab 2024

Creative Lab 2024 was a series of workshops, poetry performances and networking opportunities for poets to come together, learn, write and perform. The Lab was led by American poet Mahogany Brown.

Mahogany is a writer, playwright, & educator. Browne’s books include Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Black Girl Magic, and the banned books Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. Discover more about Mahogany Brown HERE

Mahogany brought her immense poetry skills to the 2024 Creative Lab and helped to inspire the participants to write and perform their own new pieces of poetry. The workshop attendees had just 1 and a half days to write, develop and then perform their new pieces of poetry.

The results of that creativity can be seen below, take a watch of the Creative Lab cohorts’ performance videos and also read some of the poems written during the Creative Lab 2024.

First and not the last – adeola yemitan

Last funeral – gayathiri Kamalakanthan

for when you outlive me – aj king

You Do Not Have to be the good you – ifti

Read:

Last Funeral by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan

I remember our last funeral
because of what you told me.

You’ll likely die, grieving.
You’ll likely die far sooner or later than you wish.
So don’t sit. Don’t wait. Don’t pray.
Do what you want.

You waited until the music began,
then reached into your breast pocket,
slipping out a pack of cards.

You nodded at me from the men’s side.
Bring your sister. Hurry. Now!
Our only window to escape,
while Mum’s eyes stayed closed in prayer.

Mum said no, but you did it anyway.
Smuggled it in beneath your shirt,
your comfort blanket, later mine:
a book of Modern Bridge Conventions.

Heirlooms – Cherry Eckel

My grandmother’s house reserves no space for the dead.
She has no time for haunting. The day after 
my grandfather died, she emptied 
his wardrobe and sat in his spot on the sofa;
no point in leaving this empty, 
she said. She told me 

a few months later, 
sat in that same spot,
that she does not trust 
charming men.

I carry this in my back pocket.
I pack it in my bag before nights out.
I tuck it between sandwiches in Tupperware.
I hold its hand when I cross the road.
I whisper it to myself at night 
like a bedtime story. 

I press it into the hand of my younger self;
bird thing, welly boots, bright pink tights,
wrath wrapped in precisely braided plaits.
I tell her to hold on, 
to remember,
to not let go.

‘Untitled’ – Eileen Gbagbo

I arrived when the griot took a vow of silence –
In the distance between hope and silence

between beats.

I arrived as chaos and stayed 
Long enough to become a fuck you eulogy

I lived in the vibrations –
In the counter archive of history

I came from language born out of my father’s lies,
Arrived wearing a tattered dress stitched together by missed calls and blue ticked voicenotes

I remain in the stampede blackpentecostal

Do not ask me about dismemberment. Ask me the last time I was whole – Chloe Clarke

I know what it’s like to leave my vocal chords 
on the stairs of a job interview.
To string my intestines down onto a zebra crossing 
as my roadkill body is dragged in front of headlights.

I think I left my hip bone in a doctor’s office, 
I did not flinch as he lay me down 
onto the butcher block.
It was just nice to rest my eyes.

A man told me that he’d rather be dead than me, 
I wonder if he still has my middle finger in his throat, 
whether he has had time to digest the consequences of his words?

The air of Hadamar slices me into quarters. 
I am a headless fish 
whose tail is yet to forget 
the stream of my past.

I left my eye there,
cored it out in the bathroom 
and placed it in front of the sink mirror. 

I do not know anymore 
what parts of my body I gave 
and which parts were taken.

This event was funded in part by a grant from the United States Department of State. The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the author[s] and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.