Trauma Genes

I’ve had the honour of being part of Sammy Brough’s ‘Trauma Genes’ Home Cooking Podcast, which you can listen to here. I was interested in the topic as it made me think of Dr Joy Leary’s research on Post Traumatic Slave Disorder, below.

My poem was based on research that I amalgamated in poetic form, using first person, and a ‘telephone’ sound to give a sense of distance to reinforce the idea of trauma being passed through history.

On 1st June, I performed a piece I wrote for You Press on a project called ‘Voices of Redemption’, where artists were paired with ex-offenders to tell their story. My particular story questioned the line between victim and perpetrator, and although I didn’t realise this would be a common theme, it was surprising to see the amount of injustice within the justice system. Yet, I also wanted the poem to recognise the crime committed, to move on from that, and other than impacting the audience, I wanted the person I was paired with to get something positive from the experience. It was a challenging project, simply because it is quite daunting to have someone else’s life and write a poem about it. There’s a recording of the previous project ‘One Story: Our Voice’ I was involved with, and I hope this will also be recorded as it was such a unique and important event.

I have also performed at The Last Word Festival with Kid Glove at The Roundhouse. It has been a long and difficult few months building up to the show, and we’re yet to decided where we will take the show. Practically, it may be unrealistic to be able to perform it in the way we may have had in our mind at the start, but it has been a massive learning experience and I think we accomplished a great scratch show in the end, being such an ambitious project. I mean, one of us lives in Germany! I think everyone deserves a massive pat on the back for pulling it off and I’m sure we’ve all learnt a lot about ourselves from it.

I’m reading a few books at the moment – one that stands out is The Ice Cream Empire, by Kit Poulson, and it very much reminds me of the writing from ‘Dear Adventure’ and has made me think that we could do something with text, or even sound, as a way forward with the show idea. I’ve also been listening to a few things on the radio…

1. BBC Radio 1Xtra are doing special features on poetry/spoken word and some of my fellow poets have been involved so far. Hopefully more on this later!

2. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock has been featured on BBC Radio 4 and features lovely people like Kayo Chingonyi and Emmy the Great.

My next performance is at The Chocolate Poetry Club. Thank you to the mystery person who recommended me. I’ve only had one other paid gig this year, so it really cheered me up to have this to look forward to!