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I am enjoying the inhale after the great exhale that was ‘ache’ – Scarlett Ward tells us what she went thought when putting together her debut collection ‘ache’ last year, and what she has been doing since.

Scarlett Ward’s incredible debut collection ache was published last year, and quickly became one of our best selling titles of 2019. With the launch of an eBook edition (which you can find HERE ) and an upturn on poetry purchasing generally during lockdown, ache has been soaring once more. it seemed like a good time to catch up with Scarlett and see what she feels about the collection know and what she has been up to since.

It’s been a year since you handed in your finished manuscript to us so that we could produce your wonderful book ache. Lots of poets are quite quick to outgrow their work. How do you feel about the collection now?

I remember what a wonderful feeling it was to finally hand it in after working on it for so long! Some poems I find quite difficult to return to, especially ones that deal with my sexual assault and mental health problems, however over time I’ve found that the more freely I can revisit them the less they haunt me. 

What’s nice is being able to revisit my poems and perform them from a much stronger place. I feel that I’m constantly maturing and evolving, but these poems were absolutely authentic to my experiences and the way I wanted to deliver them and I’m still very proud of what I produced.

Instagram question from Hannah Marie: How does your work change from first draft to final book? Also what is the editing process like?

In the beginning I was writing as much as possible and it was only when I felt I started to develop a theme and a tone within my poetry that I felt ready to start bringing a collection together. That’s a really important step actually, because the way in which your poems interact with one another in a collection influences the impact and understanding of the entire book, so I spent a lot of time with print-outs littering my living room floor agonising over what would be the right order for my book.

I think the editing process is as important as the creation process, and I actually cancelled a lot of social plans because I was so thoroughly consumed by my editing for a long time. As agonising as it is, I really love the process! Jo Bell said “cut the last two lines of your poem” and whilst you must obviously take that advice with a pinch of salt, it has actually served me extremely well! “How To Be A Poet” by Nine Arches Press taught me a lot about editing and the importance of making every single word “earn” its place in the poem. 

I never trust someone who tells me that they don’t edit and only preserve the raw first draft. Surely we mustn’t be that arrogant to think we are above improvement!

Instagram question from Hayden Robinson “did you find it helpful to research a publisher?”

Oh yes absolutely. I always knew I wanted to submit to Verve Poetry Press and that was because of what I had seen from them. My first encounter with Verve was being selected to have a poem published in the anthology celebrating the 5 year anniversary of Beatfreeks. I saw how this community of diverse and electrifying voices was being represented and I knew it was something I wanted to be involved in. I read Amera Saleh’s I Am Not From Here and Casey Bailey’s Adjusted and loved the quality of the books being produced. It’s really important to read books coming from the publisher you’re considering. I was dying to be part of the exciting and lively scene that Verve was building in the Midlands and took steps to put together a manuscript with Stuart’s help and guidance. My advice would be to research into and get to know a publisher and what they like to print, and see whether you would be a good fit together.

What are you busy with poetry-wise in lockdown?

At the moment I am busy working on my online workshops and editing services. I found that I have a real passion for the editing process, which I think originated from my day job as a copywriter, and then was exacerbated by my own personal experience publishing ache. The past few months I’ve been taking on clients who are looking for guidance, advice, proofreading services and general help with putting together their own collections.

I put the workshops on my Patreon, a subscription platform through which I can provide members with together writing prompts, exercises, wider reading and open submission recommendations. I’m finding it really fulfilling, and if anyone wants to sign up my shop is www.patreon.com/swbpoetry .

What are your plans for afterwards and where do you think you’ll take your poetry next?

I feel like my poetry is maturing all the time. I’ve always been an avid reader but at the moment during lockdown I am consuming books quite ferociously and I think this is one of the best ways to develop a critical perspective of the landscape of poetry to which we are currently contributing and being influenced by. I’m currently enjoying writing freely for various anthologies or competitions. I don’t think I’ll release another collection for a while as I am just enjoying the inhale after the great exhale that was ache.

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Genevieve Carver

‘I’ve got really used to performing with the band, so now I find it quite nerve-wracking when they are not there!’ Genevieve Carver talks poetry, develop-ment and what it’s like writing for her band, The Unsung.

Following on from a storming launch at Verve Poetry Festival in February, which everyone agreed blew the audience away, Genevieve Carver and her band, The Unsung, had to cancel most of the planned tour of their incredible poetry show, A Beautiful Way to be Crazy. The tour will be back, and when it is you should definitely see it, but in the mean time, we asked Genevieve to describe it to us and to explain how it fits together with both her solo performance and page poetry.

It seems a complicated move for a poet to form a band to create a poetry show. What made you want to follow this route?

This is the second show I’ve made with multi-instrumentalist band The Unsung (Ruth Nicholson, Tim Knowles and Brian Bestall). Our first show (confusingly titled The Unsung) was all about people whose deaths were caused by music – I’ve always been fascinated by the power of music, both dark and light.

With both our first show and A Beautiful Way to be Crazy, it made sense to work with live music firstly because of the subject matter, but also because I’m a big believer in bringing poetry to new audiences, and I think music gives people a ‘way in’. Plus, the sound and rhythm of words has always played a big part in my writing, and I tend to see poetry as a kind of music written with words anyway.

It is an extremely enjoyable but also a moving show. What were the key messages you were trying to communicate?

The show explores female experiences in the music industry, but also covers broader themes to do with gender, mental health and confidence.

Women make up just 30% of the music industry as a whole, and as little as 2% in certain, usually more tech-heavy roles. At the time I started researching this as an issue, I was also was starting to realise a lot of things about my own journey into performing – the confidence I lacked as a younger woman, the way I always felt the need to apologise for taking up space in the world. I think gender stereotypes are something you can go a long time without seeing, but once you see them, they won’t leave you alone, so I delved further and further in, talking to more and more people about their experiences.

I ended up interviewing almost 50 female and non-binary music practitioners including singers, instrumentalists, sound engineers, producers and events promoters and covering genres from classical to folk, electronica, rock, pop and jazz. I interviewed performers in a sex workers’ opera, internationally touring DJs and members of an all-female band of adults with learning difficulties. The Unsung has always been about bringing to the fore the stories of people who otherwise wouldn’t be heard, so it felt right to talk about my own experiences alongside a diverse range of other voices.

There are some other poems in your book of the show for A Beautiful Way to be Crazy that come from an earlier time when you were tending to work as a solo poet. How did you get into poetry, and how has your career progressed over time?

When I was about twelve years old a school friend came over and saw The Penguin Book of English Verse by my bedside. ‘You’re not actually reading that for fun are you?’ she said, and from then on I thought a love of poetry was something you were supposed to keep secret.

I wrote bits in my bedroom through uni, but only really got into it when I moved to Sheffield after I graduated. I was really lucky in finding a buzzing spoken word scene here, and started doing my first open mics in about 2011, when I was 25. I was working full time as an archaeologist then, but was doing more and more writing and performing, and starting to get booked locally for featured slots.

In my late 20s I had a bit of a nervous breakdown, which I won’t go into, but it led to me quitting my archaeology 

job. I started working part-time in a café and doing as much poetry as I could in between, including forming The Unsung in 2016, getting a few poems published in journals and magazines, and beginning to tour further afield. Over time I’ve been able to shift more and more of my focus and income to writing and performing, and am now fully self-employed. I’ve had some great opportunities recently, including being apprentice poet in residence at Ilkley Literature Festival, working in a writer’s room on a new drama series for Sky TV, collaborating with a movement artist a new piece for stage, and of course the publication of my first collection by Verve Poetry Press.

Has your poetry had to adapt itself to the work you are doing with The Unsung? It feels like quite a different beast to your previous solo poetry work.

I write differently if I’m writing for the band than say, if I’m writing what you might call a ‘page poem’. The poems I write for The Unsung tend to be more immediately accessible and rhythmical, so their meaning isn’t lost amongst everything else going on. I work very closely with the band to make sure the words and music are complementing rather than competing with each other, so that my voice and the voices of the other instruments are all working together to tell a story.

I’ve got really used to performing with the band, so now I find it quite nerve-wracking when they are not there! You forget how exposing it is when it’s just you up there, so I guess I’ve got a new-found respect for that.

 

You can buy a copy of Genevieve’s collection, including the entire show for A Beautiful Way to be Crazy HERE .

You can read more about Genevieve and her band as well as the poem, ‘Champagne, Cocktails & Sausages’ up on the ace Proletarian Poetry Website HERE .

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Jasmine Gardosi

Jasmine Gardosi is a Birmingham based poet of national and international standing and renown. She has appeared on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, BBC Asian Network and Glastonbury Festival.

As well as performing regularly around the UK, she is expanding her international reach. Most recently, she had been featured by Button Poetry, the world’s largest spoken word platform, after being awarded an Honourable Mention for Oustanding International Entry in their 2018 video contest.

A Ledbury Poetry Festival board member, she also runs West Midlands Poets’ Place for Apples and Snakes, and regular school and community workshops, where she continues to combine sex education and creativity.

Incredibly Hurtz is Jasmine Gardosi’s first foray into print. It is also a labour of love. A single poem, performable, readable on the subject of sound, colour and individual pain (physical but also and most notably emotional).

Incredibly Hurtz is Jasmine Gardosi’s first foray into print. It is also a labour of love. A single poem, performable, readable on the subject of sound, colour and individual pain (physical but also and most notably emotional).

Jasmine’s incredible piece helps launch our new Verve Poetry Pamphlet series – ‘Pamphlet of Words’ – in which Spoken Word Poets of note explore the variety of ways performance pieces can be aimed resolutely at the page and yet still fly in performance.

‘What emerges in these pages is the range and ambition of her poetry across a full sequence – shot through [as it is] with a compassion, concern and attention which is never less than moving.’ – Luke Kennard

LINK TO REVIEW:

Vic Pickup on sphinxreview.co.uk

https://sphinxreview.co.uk/index.php/930-jasmine-gardosi-hurtz

SAMPLE POEM:

Natural phenomena

Are you watching a dazzling sunset
or your heart sink over the horizon?
Is that a rainbow
or your regret bending over the sky?
Is it a foggy morning
or can you not see through your grief today?
Are you taking a photo of the northern lights
or is that your loneliness writhing overhead?
Is it really an overcast day
or is that just your self-loathing blocking the sun?
Walk into it.

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Ben Norris

Ben Norris is a poet, playwright and actor. He is two-time national poetry champion – 2017 BBC Poetry Slam and 2013 UK All-Stars Poetry Slam – and has appeared everywhere from Latitude Festival to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. His debut solo show. ‘The Htichhikers’ Guide to the Family’ won the IdeasTap Underbelly Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before touring the UK and Australia, and his first short film, commissioned by Channel 4, was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award. He is currently developing a new show about elite sport, ‘The Distance’.

Ben is from Nottingham and is currently poet-in-residence for Nottinghamshire Libraries, and a Creative Associate at Nottingham Playhouse. He also plays Ben Archer in ‘The Archers’ on BBC Radio Four.

 

Catalysed by the end of a complex polyamorous relationship played out on opposite sides of the world, some ending sees Norris revisit his parents’ earlier separation and uncover a grief he’d forbidden himself at the time.

These poems look unflinchingly at heartbreak and find it everywhere – in protracted attempts to untangle two lives and the people caught in the cross-fire, in the messy deaths of loved ones, and in the tragedy of men unable to express themselves; this is a pamphlet about endings of all kinds, how they intersect, and how we reconfigure ourselves in the wake of them. But there is love, hope, and forgiveness here too. All endings have the seeds of new beginnings in them, and as Norris’s poems unfurl, this becomes as much a eulogy to new-found friendship and self-love as it is an eloquent dissection of loss.

some ending is Ben Norris’ second pamphlet.

 

‘These poems are raw, fresh, and fluent, without a cliché or slack moment in sight. Norris conveys not only a sense of himself, but himself as someone on whom nothing is lost. Interesting, smart, sensitive, witty. He’s the real deal.’                        – COLM TÓIBÍN

‘These are moving, witty, and beautifully-crafted poems which are never complacent, never letting us stay on the surface.’ – ANDREW MCMILLAN

LINKS TO REVIEWS:

Jonathan Davidson in Under The Radar

https://ninearchespress.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-common-fate-jonathan-davidson-reviews.html

Louise Essex in Cardiff Review

“So was the writing and the living”: Ben Norris’ Some Ending

 

 

SAMPLE POEM:

a plenary question for victorian medical practitioners and their ancient
predecessors concerning the role of the organs and humours in the governance  of feeling

tell me     who decided that the heart is where love lives?
I have sent fifty beating red emojis this week
to friends in distress and people I want
to say thank you to      people I am missing
people I missed     a new friend is listening to silences
differently      an old friend is helping her     I feel a displacement
tell me      where is the small intestines emoji     I can’t very well
send you the little poo and expect you to know what I mean
where is the insomnia emoji     the glowing yellow
person staring into a fridge not hungry just empty
you have given us this new language but
no language to talk about it     tell me
what is the emoji for safety      what is the emoji for
thank you: I didn’t know how to say any of this before

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Ali Lewis

‘My poems were very bad for ages…’ Ali Lewis explains his relatively slow move towards publishing his first pamphlet – Hotel, out now with Verve Poetry Press

The launch of Ali Lewis’s incredible debut pamphlet, Hotel, due at Foyles in Charing Cross Road on March 18th, was postponed along with so many other events this Spring. So we wanted to ask Ali some of the questions he might have answered at his launch – what kind of poet he is trying to be, what his influences are, and why it has taken him SO long to find his way to producing his debut pamphlet. After all, it truly has been worth the wait – or as Kathryn Maris has said, ‘Implausibly excellent, Hotel marks the debut of an exceptional new talent.’

Ali, you write about such varied subjects! Do you think there’s an underlying theme or question linking all of the poems in this pamphlet?

There are definitely a lot of subjects in the pamphlet, yes. Knife-throwing, waterslides, the heat death of the universe, diamond cutting, how bad people were at sports before not smoking was invented. And, of course, the poems are all also about love, time, loss, et cetera. — but every text, whether it means to or not, tells you about those things.

Between those two poles of specificity, I’m interested in power relationships, which is to say all relationships. I’m interested in the unexpected and untraceable ways we do harm when we’re trying not to, or at least not trying to (what economists might call the ‘negative externalities’) — in how we manage to hurt and help each other through both our attention and our inattention.

One aspect of this, which comes up repeatedly, is the almost inherent tension between the two useful things men can do at the moment: speaking up and shutting up; acting and getting out of the way. Obviously this is a contradiction I’ve not solved, hence there are poems, like ‘The Englishman’, which are critiques of the many horrible ways we as men behave, but there are also poems like ‘Wild Fig’, in which the speakers actively try to background themselves and centre the experience of a more important other.

Something which, of course, is impossible, while you’re the one speaking.

As well as the variety of subjects, there’s also a variety of form and voices…

Yes, I think this probably relates to the influence of other writers. I’m fascinated with the way poems talk with each other, and with ideas from elsewhere, so if, on a particular day, I’m writing differently, it’s probably because I’m reading differently.

I’m actually about to teach a course at the Poetry School on influence and taking inspiration from other writers. Karen McCarthy Woolf, who I was thrilled to get a cover quote from, is a master at this, weaving together ideas and voices, most obviously in her couplings. Bridget Minamore’s ‘zadie smith’s first novel is’ is another poem that does this amazingly. It’s probably the poem I give out at workshops most often.

I don’t have a coupling in Hotel, but there’s a glosa and a poem-beginning-with-a-line-by. Kay Ryan, whose quatrain I quote in that glosa, is a writer who’s been particularly important to me. Her ear — her facility with what she calls recombinant rhyme — is amazing. I hope there’s some of her influence visible in my shorter lyrics.

Often I can pinpoint the exact poem or poet I was reading when I wrote a particular piece of my own. ‘Making Love to the Knife Thrower’, for example, I wrote the same day I read Abigail Parry’s Jinx. I was reading Jane Hirshfield when I wrote ‘Sonnet’; Alex Bell when I wrote ‘The Englishman’; Kathryn Maris when I wrote ‘Test Scenario’. She’s probably been my most important influence, through both her work and her teaching.

Your work is widely published and it also strikes me as being popular and accessible for non-poets. This feels like a real skill to have struck and maybe quite a rare one. Are you aware of finding this balance when you write or is it incidental? 

That’s kind of you to say. It is something I work on, yes. I view the poems I write and read primarily as a method of communication. An attempt to get across some idea, or situation, or state of mind, or to receive one, even if it’s not the same one that was sent.

I don’t necessarily mean that I want my poems or anyone else’s to be ‘simple’ or parsable into plain prose. So much of what a poem is is what’s not translatable (I don’t say ‘reducible’) to prose. I only mean that I want the ones I show to other people to be thoughtful of them as readers.

You’ve waited a relatively long time before bringing out your first pamphlet. Were you waiting for the right set of poems to assemble as opposed to simply knowing you had enough ‘good ones’ to fill a pamphlet?   

Mostly it took so long because my poems were very bad for ages and nobody sensible wanted to publish them. (I don’t say this to be performatively modest. Loads of even really amazing writers have written truly dreadful poems, and every time I find one it’s an enormous comfort to me).

I’m embarrassed looking back at some of the poems I shopped around in the past — and thankful to the editors who didn’t accept them — but I try to tell myself that this shame is evidence of my continuing growth, rather than of my enduring terribleness revealed by the clarity of hindsight.

Perhaps I’ll also feel embarrassed about the poems in Hotel in a few years, but I hope not, because the real answer to your question is that I waited for poems that still felt right to me even after a few months or years had passed. Ones that had a bit of staying power.

Getting to that point, both in terms of the poems themselves and my own confidence in them, owes in the most part to help from some wonderful teachers and organisations: Maura Dooley at Goldsmiths, Kathryn Maris, who I’ve mentioned, the Poetry School, TOAST Poets, Cove Park, and Verve. They’re all great.

Of course, by my own logic, feeling good about the poems in Hotel means I’ve stopped growing as a person. I guess you can’t have it both ways.

What’s next for you, following the launch of Hotel? Should we cross our fingers for a full collection from you any time soon?

I particularly love pamphlets, so I’m in no rush to bring out a full collection. Right now, I’m working on a pamphlet called Since We Last. There’ll be a sequence of ‘Since’ poems and a sequence of ‘We’ poems and a sequence of ‘Last’ poems, and they’ll all be very sad and about love.

Plus, we’ll be trying to set up a launch for Hotel once it’s safe to do so!

 

                                                                                                                                                 

 

You can read Ali’s poem, The Englishman, which was recently Poem of the Week at Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre (and features in Hotel) HERE.

…and his poem, Wild Fig, which was poem of the week at the LRB Bookshop HERE

 

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Clive Birnie

Clive Birnie is a poet and artist who works in both text and visual media. He finds inspiration at a place where poetry and art collide into something which gets called text-based-art but sometimes he types up the results as text only poems such as those included in his wonderful Verve Poetry Press pamphlet Palimpsest. Clive is also owner and editor in chief at Burning Eye Books.

He was the Hashtag# poet in residence at the StAnza International Poetry Festival in 2016, has exhibited work at the Saatchi backed The Other Art Fair, the Evolver Prize Exhibition, at Spike Island and in Millennium Square, Bristol. Palimpsest is the fourth in a series of experimental poetry sequences following Terminal Insemination Art (Silkworms Ink 2011), Cutting Up the Economist (Burning Eye 2014) and Hashtag# Poetry (Burning Eye 2016).

Clive’s pamphlet Palimpsest explores a near future where the banal merges with the bizarre, truth and fiction blur and digital and analogue collide. These are poems that are made rather than written in the conventional sense.

Poems that are built from scraps of text appropriated from magazines, junk mail, ephemera; erased, redacted, cut up and overwritten with original lines to create palimpsests. The title is thus both a creative technique revealed in the visible lines of construction and an eponymous anti-superhero in whose steps we follow as she emerges from a collage of fractured narratives and cinematic dispatches from a dark and murderous hinterland. This is a truly exceptional piece of work and well worth investigating.

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Roxy Dunn

‘I confess I draw on my own life a lot.’ Roxy Dunn answers questions (and makes confessions) about her new Verve Poetry Press pamphlet Big Sexy Lunch.

In the wake of the publication of Roxy Dunn’s wonderful new pamphlet Big Sexy Lunch and to an extent in lieu of the postponed launch that was originally planned for March 18th at Foyles on Charing Cross Road, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to Roxy about what kind of poet she is trying to be and what kind of poems she is trying to write. She doesn’t say this, but I will: she is a fresh and compelling new voice in contemporary poetry – modern and sharp, sassy, funny, but with an uncanny ability to disarm and move the reader at precisely the same time. (How does she do that?). Roxy has  a big future in poetry. One look at her pamphlet will tell you why.

This is your second pamphlet, following 2017’s Clowning which you published with Eyewear. What’s changed in your writing since then?  

Well, my initial response to this question (which sounds very basic as an answer!) is that my poems have become longer. (Clowning had a couple of four liners in it if I recall.) Expanding on an idea/pushing it further is something I’ve been actively focussing on. I also think this pamphlet is perhaps more cynical than my earlier work. Not in a bad way necessarily, hopefully just in an honest way. 

As well as writing poetry, you’ve been in Babylon (Channel 4) and your Radio 4 comedy ‘Joz and Roxy are Useless Millennials’ has just come out. How do you think your work as a comedian and an actor interacts with your poetry? 

I think I try to look for the humour in whatever it is I’m writing about. Not always, but you’ll often find at least small examples of it in most of the poems in this pamphlet. I also think I have a sense of hearing the lines as I write them which probably comes from my being an actor and wanting not only to read and write poetry but my desire to speak it aloud. 

Damon Albarn, Drake, Netflix, Socrates, Hedda Gabler, Virginia Woolf — so many of your poems mix pop culture and ‘high culture’. How important do you think it is for poets to engage with the contemporary? 

I actually think one of the pitfalls of my work is how contemporary it is. I remember another poet in a class of mine once very reasonably posing the question, ‘will this poem last?’ And it’s a very valid point. It feels like maybe it’s a trade off – that by writing in a way that people right now will immediately engage and relate to, you decrease the chances of that poem surviving beyond its immediate lifespan?  

Frank O’Hara appears twice in the book. What do you think his influence is? Who or what else influences your work? 

I really love his poems and he’s definitely influenced the way I write in terms of showing me how conversational and direct the language in a poem can be. In terms of what else influences my writing, I confess I draw on my own life a lot (which feels like I’m now confessing a confession!) This isn’t to say my poems are autobiographical but they all come from a place of having experienced either a similar situation, thought, or feeling to the one I’m writing about and then changing the specifics to fictionalise/poeticise it.  

You have a sharp, breezy, very modern voice, so readers might miss the formal work going on, but there are Hannah Sullivan-esque couplets in ‘Weeds’, there’s a subtle enclosed rhyme scheme in ‘Sweet Casanova’, there’s even a glosa (a complex Spanish form of court poetry!). What’s your relationship with form?

 I’m delighted you’ve alerted readers to the ‘formal work’ in that case! It’s definitely an aspect of poetry I feel less comfortable with but the Poetry School classes have been instrumental in alerting me to these forms/rhyme schemes you mention above. In fact, I remember Kathryn Maris introducing me to Hannah Sullivan’s work in one of the classes I took there. [Verve Stablemate] Ali Lewis was in the same class! Small world! 

I know it’s sometimes hard to think forward when a pamphlet of yours has just been released – but do you see this is something that could lead to a collection some time in the not too distant future?

Ha, I feel so very far away from thinking about a collection! I’m still continuing to take classes and work on honing my skills as a poet. I feel like the stuff I’m writing at the moment is quite different to what I’ve previously written and I’m currently trying to push myself to be less literal when I write (which is a challenge for me!). I’d love to bring out a full collection at some point in the future but I’m not in any rush to. Right now my focus is on developing my craft, and also continuing with my other writing projects which aren’t poetry related, but feed into my poetry nonetheless. 

________________________________________________________________________________

You can read Roxy’s poem ‘July 24th’, which was Poem of the Week on the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre newsletter (and features in her new pamphlet Big Sexy Lunch) HERE.

…and her poem, Exes at Lunch, which was Poem of the Week at the LRB Bookshop HERE

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Louise Fazackerley

Louise Fazackerley is a poet from the exotic Northern streets of Orwell’s Wigan.  In performance she explores the synergy between poetry and movement.  Her socially conscious writing makes the ugly beautiful and the mundane fantastical.

Winner of the BBC Radio New voices award, Louise is signed to Nymphs & Thugs spoken word label where she released two audio books- Love Is A Battlefield and Bird St.  Her collection The Lolitas is the subject of ‘Love Is A Rebellious Bird’ an installation and film work by international artists AL + AL.   She recently supported punk poet legend Dr. John Cooper Clarke on his sold-out tour.  

Louise is a director at Write Out Loud, a national organisation supporting grass roots poetry and currently poet-in-residence at Lily Lane Primary School.

She is a highly experienced workshop leader, facilitating in education, prison and community settings.   You may have seen or heard her on BBC 1, BBC Radio 3,4,5 or read her blog in The Guardian Northerner.

 

‘A great performer’  Will Self

‘A voice that tingles with promise’  Ian McMillan

‘I wish I’d discovered her 5 years ago.  I love her and you will too.’  John Cooper Clarke

The Lolitas is an extraordinary first collection. 

It is a genre distorting, disconcerting, dystopia of daughters, single parenting, love and abuse.  From the lyric tenderness of the first kiss, to a place where poetry borders with reportage and records the experience of working with groomed girls in the care system.  

Darkly humorous, the work weaves working class narratives of fiction, fact and foretelling, in an intensely readable, page-turning glut of the gamine.        

The collection is in part a response to Nabokov’s Lolita,  a response to the #metoo movement, and includes poems that explore the story of Shamina Begum, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and how Japan treats teenage girls. It is – a powerful addition to the growing canon of #MeToo literature.

Also in BREAKING NEWS Verve Poetry Press are proud to be bringing out Louise’s pamphlet ‘The Uniform Factory’ this Autumn. It is based on her BBC Radio Three Verve New Voices show ‘Love is a Battlefield’ which is already out on audio with the ace Nymphs & Thugs. This exciting work will be published very early in September 2020 and will be available for pre-order here very soon. (Louise therefore becomes the first poet to release a second book with Verve Poetry Press!) Watch this space, and meanwhile enjoy the extracted poem featured below.

Excerpt from ‘Remembrance Someday’ in The Uniform Factory

 

The poppy, dropped on blue lino

at the side of the bath.

 

A prick of the pin, a rake of the knife,

that plastic green stem is whirring round

and round, tickticktick,, twitching, defibrillating,

the raw red paper of helicopter blades

begin to hum and roar- men scream in relief,

an hours wait, the morphine’s wearing off,

this man, this boy is still alive, handover to the doctors,

they can fly away without jumping

 

from the white of the bath like the white of the

ward like the white of the eyes of one, two,

one, two, one, two, one, two, three boys

who you saved, who were supposed to survive,

like the white of the poppy the pacifist wears

like the white of your anger, like the white

shrouds of Afghan dead, like the dirty, white

of my wedding vows, like the white teeth

of Azad, haggling for chickens,

like the white of the fallen feathers, like the

white of divorce papers in the shredder,

like the white of the skirting boards

you scrub and scrub, like the white of the

toothpaste on your daughter’s cheek

like the white bone of the domino

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Spoz

SPOZ also goes by the longer name of Giovanni Esposito. He is an award winning performance poet, singer / songwriter, film maker, playwright and is the poet-in-residence at Birmingham City FC. He has been seen on BBC and Central Television, has written for and been heard on BBC Radio Four, Radio Five Live, Radio West Midlands, Radio Coventry & Warwickshire and Capital Gold.

SPOZ…has performed at the Glastonbury Festival, Shambala Festival, Larmer Tree Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, 

Oxford Literature Festival, Warwick Words Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Wenlock Poetry Festival and Verve Festival of Poetry & Spoken Word.

“Spoz takes run-of-the-mill and real life scenarios, beats them with a blunt instrument and flushes them down the bog of the spoken word. Roger McGough meets Billy Connolly” – Warwick Words Festival.

Spoz’s poetry in Sometimes Angry is bold and direct and packs a punch. His work oozes life as he mixes sometimes humour and sometimes anger to great effect. His words mean something and have nothing to hide. And they strive to find the way towards something better. Spoz is an incredible performer but his words deserve to be read and savoured and pondered upon. This collection contains both recent and more distant work from a poet who will touch a million hearts and minds.

He has released two poetry collections for children. “The Day the Earth Grew Hair … and Other Stuff” 

and “Spoz’s Shorts and the Occasional Long One”. Check out his website https://spoz.co

‘Spoz’s work has spikey hair, carries a megaphone and wears a f**k the system T-shirt. And just like Spoz himself, beneath the spikes and the noise, inside it, there sits a thumping heart full of a drive and passion big enough to try and change the world.’ – Steven Camden AKA Polarbear

No Whites, No Cats, No English

No pussyfooting.

Get that sign up because you’re entitled to it,

Confidence in abundance … like Nike said … just do it!

But with a sense of arrogant superiority.

Self is your priority, numero uno, feline supremo,

No pink eyes on this albino!

Bad ass and biased like a Bond villain’s pet,

You just haven’t worked that bit out yet.

 

Making scents to erect an imagined border,

Top of the pecking order

And prepared to hissy fit about it,

Prepared to kick up shit about it,

Spit a sparrow’s feathers out and shout, there is no doubt about it,

Then bring the dead bird back through the catflap,

As, perhaps, some kind of a thoughtful gift?

Or just another sign that you find it hard to coexist.

Less stubborn furballs … more Joseph Goebels.

 

You shat upon your own front door mat,

Like the cat that got the cream and didn’t want to share,

You still believe nostalgia’s dream

Of when you thought you were the cat’s whiskers,

Yet conveniently forget the blisters on the fingers

That you stepped on to make your way.

You proudly purr about saving the day …

You know? The one when the vermin came?

You saw them off, not once, but twice!

No room for the disease carried by these despicable mice.

 

But you were already infected.

Needed neutering and worming

And now the feral pussies are running riot,

While the Reece Moggies are giving you ‘catnip’ to sniff on the quiet.

 

They say that pride comes before a fall, in which case,

You must have been queuing up at Beachy Head for a while now

And I’m not entirely sure how

You’ve not been splattered on the rocks below,

Though, you always land on your feet so the stories go.

 

And is it true that you have nine lives?

Eight more than most before you’re toast,

Though even then, you’ll have 101 uses,

So there’ll be no excuses on making a proper contribution to society.

I have it on good authority

(Well, a novelty book by Simon Bond, really),

That, as a stiff, ex-kitty,

Your pencil sharpening skills are a little bit … shitty.

 

So, instead of soiling our city

With the crap your noisy neighbour feeds you,

Use the litter tray … and bury those dirty deeds dude.

Because that’s the dirt that breeds you,

That’s the dirt that bleeds through,

That’s the dirt that needs to be nurtured from your nature

Until the haters concede to celebrating all species,

Don’t spread your toxic faeces

Pick up the pieces in this natural habitat

Because nobody should pamper a poisonous pussycat.

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Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is Muslim (someone who surrenders to the will of Allah), an educator, writer and spoken-word poet. She interrogates narratives around race/ism, Islamophobia, gender, feminism, state violence and decoloniality in Britain. She is the founder and author of the critical and educative blog www.thebrownhijabi.com, and co-author of A FLY Girl’s Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism (Verve, 2019). With a background studying History and 

…Postcolonial Studies, as well as a wider education from her mother and grandmother’s wisdoms, the epistemology of Islam, and work of women of colour and anti-systemic thinkers from across the world, Suhaiymah’s poetry is unapologetically political and deliberately unsettling. She isn’t interested in your guesses or analyses.

Suhaiymah’s poetry has over two million online views and since going viral as runner-up of the 2017 Roundhouse National Slam with her poem, This Is Not a Humanising Poem, she has performed on BBC Radio stations, at music festivals, in the US against Californian slam poets, across British Universities, on Sky TV, ITV, the Islam channel, Las Vegas, TEDxes, London poetry nights, mosques, protests outside the Home Office and in New York, Berlin, and Da Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles.

Postcolonial Banter is Suhaiymah’s debut collection. It features some of her most well-known and widely performed poems as well as some never-seen-before material. Her words are a disruption of comfort, a call to action, a redistribution of knowledge and an outpouring of dissent.

Whilst enraged and devastated by the world she finds herself in, in many ways that world is also the normalized and everyday reality of her life. Hence, whilst political and complex in nature, her poetry is also just the reality of life for her and others like her. 

Life in a world where structural violence is rife makes it a shared knowledge, and sometimes, when possible, that shared knowledge is the subversive in-joke, the bonding glance of solidarity, or the passing nod of affection used by those who know it to survive those structures themselves. This collection is first and foremostly for them.

Ranging from critiquing racism, systemic Islamophobia, the function of the nation-state and rejecting secularist visions of identity, to reflecting on the difficulty of writing and penning responses to conversations she wishes she’d had; Suhaiymah’s debut collection is ready and raring to enter the world. الله أكبر

Postcolonial Banter is a Verve Poetry Press bestselling title having been reprinted twice inside the first month of publication.

 

This item is also available as an EPUB download. To order this, please go HERE