Helen Seymour

The Woman With The Wasted Face: Poets, Tread Carefully This Halloween

Please don’t call the police, but I was thirteen when I first watched the fifteen-rated, 2002 version of The Ring. I was at a sleepover with a girl who had once announced: ‘If you’re not wearing a bra by year nine, there’s something wrong with you’, and I was as desperate for her friendship as…

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Spoken Word Poetry

Spoken word is dead: long live poetry?

Could it be that there is too much poetry in spoken word? There can be no props, costumes and stage personas if we absorb the assumption that poetry is not a performing art.

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Joseph Coelho

The Rise of Nature Poems: Joseph Coelho

Poetry and nature writing have often gone hand in hand. African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote beautiful poems in the late 1800’s inspired by nature like Spring Song celebrating that longed for season… ‘And ever in our hearts doth ring This song of Spring, Spring!’ and Seedling… ‘As a quiet little seedling Lay within its…

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Kat Francois

Slam Poetry: how do you maintain truth and authenticity in the face of success and demand?

Owen Craven-Griffiths Apples and Snakes’ Producer for the Midlands When it comes to spoken word it can sometimes be hard to define success. For many poets one indicator can be winning a major slam title. This was the case for me. In 2007 I won the UK Slam Championships at Stratford Theatre Royal under my…

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Joelle Taylor: Poetry and Protest

How were we to know/ that when we were cleansing/ we were erasing our whole existence – CUNTO, Joelle Taylor My whole life has been a protest, and my body a political placard. My body has also been a battleground and a bar room, a tourist spot and a cemetery, a haunted house and a roadside…

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