So I’m making an EP with an incredible producer fusing spoken word with music. Its making me pretty happy. Some shots from the studio.
Apples and Snakes commissioned a show called ’ The Rememberers’. Its a live hip-hop graphic novel/story/spoken word/rap set in the future. Its pretty cool. So it was on at the Old Vic Tunnels ( amazing location) and I had the privilege of opening the show with some other wicked poets. We wrote stuff especially for it and also ran some workshops for young people in London Schools. Overall, it was pretty amazing to be involved in.
This is the start of a story.
We were born into small town syndrome.
Small town. Loose tongues, hum drum, too young.
We spent our days in drones,
Seeking grass to lie on and listening to Forever Young,
We thought we were the only ones.
The only ones who rushed from the first drag of a cigarette,
Who flushed when his lips touched the tip of it before he passed it to yours,
Who knocked on doors on lazy Lewes streets
To bunk the train to Brighton and dip feet in the sea under the pier.
We stole older brothers mixtapes
And lived, listening, in piles of hoodies in parks
On those days that now seem as though they went on forever.
Warm beer. Trust.
Myspace and lip gloss and letters to boys,
Pretending to make love.
We thought we were the first to discover The Smiths and Pete for the first time
And realise what it feels like to actually feel and cry
Or take a pill for the first time
As our heart rates increased with our hormones
We swapped stories of losing ‘it’
In a park, or a stifling single bed
Or on the floor of an irrelevant front room with pulp fiction
Playing in the background
But only because it’s cool.
A million and one things rushed through our heads.
Laughing gas in the priory ruins
Shivering under torch light
Feigning that we weren’t cold,
Or that bench in the Grange where everyone’s secrets were told.
These were our days.
We wrapped ourselves in naivety and cliché
But we had each other.
We were too big for this town.
Waiting to get out.
Walking side by side along Kingston Road,
We thought we were invincible.
Not everyone though.
Some people get left behind,
Take the wrong track and fall stumbling at the wayside.
Writing Sunday.
After a year of workshops with Polarbear at the Roundhouse, writing, gigging around London, completing a festival tour and performing our debut show at the Edinburgh Festival, the Roundhouse Poetry Collective have graduated and become ’ Early Doors’. We’ll be up to some exciting stuff in the new year as a collective and individually. Website to follow.
Another promo film for Come Rhyme With Me. This is my piece.
I’ll be performing this and others at Come Rhyme With Me at Cottons in Islington this Friday, the 26th October.
The lovely Dean Atta and Deanna Rodger who run a wicked spoken word night in London called Come Rhyme With Me asked me to shoot a couple of videos in the run up to the night. I was asked to do a cover which was cool, I’ve never done it before. So I chose T.S Eliot’s ‘Preludes’ because when I first read this when I was about 15, I knew I wanted to write.
Some performance photos from the festival season. Busy Summer.
Me and my girls Jess Green and Maria Ferguson performing at Secret garden Party 2012 in the One Taste tent. We had a wicked time.
Photos by Charlie Carr-Gomm
So, we’ve been working on this project at the Roundhouse for 10 weeks called Talking Doorsteps where you work with Polarbear to generate poems which engage with place. So I wrote about London and my experiences with this city. The I worked closely with director Natasha Jarvis to produce a film of the words. And it was premiered at the Roundhouse tonight. So here it is. Check out the page and the other amazing pieces of work that were produced.
