Tag: poetry

Singapore #Top 5

Travel
  1. Poetry night

While it may not be the number one for everyone, as a poet, getting to read some new poems at a night in another country was an incredible highlight. It was just like any other night, but so surreal to think I was in Singapore. It was such a contrast to come to a country where you just slot in, and people don’t hold you on a pedestal. Everyone was so talented, and the content and perspective of the people there was so interesting, not to mention the range of different accents and the use of Singlish. I loved the area that it was in, and it made me feel I could live there, but I just don’t know what I would do there as English is an official language there. It’s nights like this that give you a real sense of the place, so I would recommend it to everyone.

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  1. Gardens by the Bay

Singapore is clean and immaculately designed, including its gardens. We saw the sunset as these gardens lit up. There was a lightshow with the “supertrees”, but nearby there was also a light and water show to music, and that was pretty spectacular to see. The thing about Singapore is that there is also a relaxed vibe to it. The transport can get a bit crowded at times, but nothing compared to the over-crowding in London, where I’m from, and there aren’t nearly as many people in terms of the ratio to space, so just that feeling of it being more spacious makes you feel good when strolling around.

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  1. Botanic Gardens

We went here on the morning of our flight, getting up at 6am in order to make the most of the little time we had in Singapore. Yet again, another aspect of Singapore that made me imagine living there. It was so peaceful and beautiful to walk around, sit and talk, and there were a few runners about too.

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  1. Sestona Beach

What more could you ask for with a city but it having a beach? Whilst I didn’t get to swim in it, we had fun walking around the island and looking from the viewpoint there. There’s also a theme park there, which we didn’t go to. We tried to spend as little money as possible, because, unlike the rest of South East Asia, it is more expensive due to being richer and more Westernised. There’s plenty of entertainment we didn’t explore such as the different zoos (without cages).

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  1. Chinatown and Little India

In between the shiny parts of Singapore are Chinatown and Little India. We ate in these parts a couple of times, as well as in a mall food court. The Indian food we had on the first night was so different and flavoursome, and completely vegetarian. The dish in Chinatown was super simple: noodles, soy and chicken, but – oh my god – I had not had chicken like that in months because it was a lot of breast meat from a rotisserie and cooked to perfection. It was also cool to walk around in these areas, which could be really colourful, and you could also come across different places of worship, which had sections cornered off for worship, as well as some sarongs to borrow to cover up.

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Tips: Get a travel-card for your time there, which allows you to travel through the whole city and save money. You simply hand it back at the airport station to get your deposit back. I also had an out of date map, which told me the incorrect stations, so make sure to double check the nearest station online. Our hostel, Bunc Hostel, was great because they gave you a smart device that meant you could use maps and the internet on the go. You just have to return it undamaged at the end of your stay!

 

Feminist Poetry

Feminism

One funny (aka annoying) thing about identifying as a Feminist and being relatively vocal about it as a poet (like putting on an event with women-only features) is that you get put in a particular box.

The thing is, the whole point of Feminism is to not be put in a box; it’s about dismantling binaries of gender, and dichotomies such as the infamous virgin/whore one. I guess that’s why lots of people have been sharing comment from Maisie Williams about the label “Feminist” – reducing it to the simple catchy phrase that anyone who isn’t Feminist should be labelled “sexist”. I don’t want to go too far into this part, because the statement that is being shared is reductive and denies the nuances of sexism and misogyny, but it also denies the complexity of what Williams was trying to express, which was actually about trolling and shame, rather than Feminism (in fact the idea that women can be just as nasty as men is Feminist). Her words have been taken way too far out of context,now having read the original interview. One critic I have is that by labelling people “sexist”, you’re actually perpetuating the culture of shame (I haven’t read this yet, but I think it will be really eye-opening when I do).

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I’m categorically not interested in arguing about whether we need the label “Feminism” needs to go, or whether it needs a rebrand. It is a type of activism related to gender, acknowledging the systematic oppression of women throughout history. And personally, Feminism needs to strive to be intersectional – how can you care about women if it’s only one type of woman? This means that you listen to people from other oppressed groups and take on board what they say, taking into account some of your own privilege. I strongly believe that patriarchy damages men and boys, and this is something that is very much a part of my Feminism, yet within this an understanding that men and boys have also tended to benefit from the system. If people want to know what Feminism is today, my recommendations are:

bell hooks – everything
Laura Bates – Everyday Sexism
Michael Kimmel – his books, but also him speaking

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But anyway, I’ve got carried away. What I really wanted to say (moan about) is about the conflict I have between my Feminism being an important part of my identity and yet people sometimes have the trouble to see that this means that I am a person, a human being, and not an object or a number to get a certain quota. It’s important to me to write poetry on Feminism and it’s something I’ve been doing for around 9 years, since I started to take my poetry to the microphone. When I was younger I wrote about being a Feminist who waxes (and a guy in the audience asked me if I was really a Feminist – shock, horror!) and about the beauty industry. Recently, I still write about these kinds of topics, but also about female genital cutting, rape as a weapon of war, and dismantling damaging notions of masculinity. However, when I started writing poetry, it was sickeningly and overwhelmingly about boys. I look back now and I laugh (cringe) because I can’t even remember who the hell I’ve written about so emotively. I mean, I once wrote a poem about a guy I fancied at a club who had a broken arm. I won “Best Loss Poem” at Glam Slam in 2011 with a tale of heart-break, after a string of unrequited love/lust/infatuation. Things aren’t always easy just because you’re in a relationship, so I still have a few sombre poems, but also a whole host of lovey-dovey poems, which are really hard to write well!feminism-is-the-radical-notion-that-women-are-people-quote-1

The point is that about 5% of my material is overtly Feminist, but Feminist lines and themes will slip in because it is such a big part of my being. And let’s not get me started on the comment (insult) that one guy made about my work being “very feminine”. It was the only comment he said, and he spoke with a sneer, out of his judgemental, condescending nose. However, there is also very little I don’t write about as I play with different forms and get inspired by different things. I guess it’s difficult because when you become a brand to market – as sadly you do when you put yourself out there in the creative industries – people want something like “Feminist poet” to cling to. Perhaps what concerns me is how others perceive me, and I worry that there may be any negativity surrounding this. But is this real or imagined? A certain poet has seemed to change their mind about sexism being morally wrong, but it seems to be going well for them. Like, my hashtag below was a joke, yet the “joke” responses that followed weren’t at all funny in my opinion… but then, Feminists have no sense of humour, so… I didn’t know how to respond to someone who is meant to be a peer, and who I expect to be respectful, so a simple sarcastic “lolz” was all I could muster.

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Anyway, I guess I need to remember what Benjamin Zephaniah once told me – that if you are a black woman who is a lesbian and in a wheelchair, you have to write some poems about other things than those aspects of your identity. So, there’s only so many poems I can share about Feminism before people will think that’s all I do! So I guess I need to be aware of what I put out there, and share every part of my writing more widely, not just the more political pieces. Maybe it will make up for all my Feminist ranting. But one thing’s for sure – I will never give up on Feminism or on myself! I’ve been through a tough time recently, but Destiny’s Child and Christina Aguilera and Nirvana have helped me through it! And now I have been writing for so long, but I feel good getting it out! 💪

Wellbeing: World Bipolar Day

Wellbeing

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I’ve never been properly diagnosed, because I’m sure it would be more official, but a doctor once told me I have cyclothymia. It’s a mild form of bipolar disorder, and means that my functioning isn’t as impaired as those who have bipolar type I or II because it consists of mild depression and hypomania. Interestingly, I have had a diagnosis of GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder), and below it states that 62.9& of those on the bipolar spectrum also have an anxiety disorder. I feel like a lot of the time my mood is an internal thing that fluctuates, just as anyone’s does, but it means the extremities aren’t always visible. It can then get to a stage where, not necessarily feeling like I bottle things up, but, it can feel like things have built up to boiling point.

The last couple of days I’ve gone from mild depression to hypomania. I would say that today has been close to “normal”, but it can be hard to define what that is, and I’m currently writing this past 11pm, knowing that this will mean a late night, but also feeling anxious about how it will impact on my day tomorrow. I want to exercise in the morning and have time to fit in washing my hair in time for me to be able to go out later with dry hair. I have a CBT appointment and I have no idea whether I’ve been doing what I was meant to be doing.

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So, yesterday my mood was sent spiralling after feeling upset about a conversation and that relationship, and had a stressful time after I booked a train ticket to arrive at home when I’ll already be in another city. I had expected to do a whole load of things that afternoon and ended up only just getting through my emails. I was meant to cook for my mum, but after falling into a deep sadness, combined with incredible rage and sense of hopelessness, I had lost my appetite. Anyone who knows me will know that I very rarely lose my appetite. I felt guilty about what little I’d done, and the hassle with trainline.com had me feeling pessimistic about recovering any positive feelings that night. So, what helped? The cooking I eventually did helped, talking to my mum helped, and so did accepting things the way they were. I had a bath, ate chocolate, watched a film and a reasonably good night’s sleep, though disrupted by waking early. I did also write some poetry for pleasure before I went to sleep, and it was a really important, cathartic experience.

Today I was lucky to have a main focus for my attention, which was a poetry commission I’m working on. I had a doctor’s appointment, and I have to walked through a field of horses to get there, which always seems bizarre to me. I felt really irritable throughout the walk – towards dogs, towards children, towards everyone – but I also felt empowered by taking ownership of the day, and I think the walking helped. The sun was shining, I had shades on, and I was listening to Destiny’s Child. I returned to my poems when I was home and combined research and writing. I didn’t finish, and I didn’t get to write any of the novel, but I was glad at my focus and what I had achieved. I was also able to fit in a couple hundred words of that novel in between getting injections and getting some soup at EAT before attending a poetry workshop. My focus on these creative pursuits enabled me to move on from how I was feeling the day before, and also to take the focus away from the relationship, personalising the conversation I’d had, so that when I talked to that person again, the conversation was good for both of us.

So, other than the parts highlighted in bold in both of these passages, I thought I’d write a list of things that have helped me in my own wellbeing. I thought it was interesting to describe about it in terms of these two days, but it’s also worth noting that it can be outwardly more extreme from cartwheeling in public spaces to crying lots and self-harming (although anxiety might have a bit to do with this too). So, some things:

-Meditation
-Relaxing baths
-Massages
-Playing sad songs/watching sad films (or uplifting ones)
-Singing
-Exercise
-Good support system – talking to friends and family, or online forums
-Being creative in a cathartic way (as opposed to professional/work stuff)
-Cooking (cleaning and gardening may be similar for others)
-Reminding yourself of positive qualities and who you are
-Making fun plans to look forward to
-Chocolate/treating yourself

Things to avoid:
-Long internet sessions without purpose, especially when comparing self with others
-Not doing anything or wanting to do too much – focus on one goal at a time
-Pushing away loved ones
-Drinking alcohol excessively

So, these things are just touching the surface, but for me it was important to make a list, to remind myself that all these things are as worthwhile as ticking things off my to-do list. It’s really hard to listen to what you need in the moment, and I don’t really know what my own patterns are in terms of cyclothymia, but that’ll be something I figure out. With or without such labels, these things are important for everyone to remember.

Oh, and for poetry, play the video on here – Emily Harrison, open about her own bipolar disorder, and also an excellent poet.She also has a book out.

World Poetry Day: Palm Sunday

poems

Palm Sunday

For my friends and loved ones, the Year 11 girl whose grandma passed away this weekend, and for anyone else this may comfort.

Here, have these blessed things,
carry them with you as you journey home.
This knowledge will make you feel safe,
though you don’t really have that kind of faith.
It is spring now, and though you are alone,
soon you’ll be a pair of birds spreading wings.

Sometimes life leaves you standing in the wings,
and you can’t think of your lines, amongst the many things
going on around you – so many people, yet so alone,
and you’re sure what to call “home”
and all these months you’ve had faith,
but they were the one who made you feel safe

and you’re old as slang saying good is “safe”,
ending nights out with chips, fried chicken wings,
garlic bread, the echo of dance tracks from Faith-
less, swimming through the airwaves, thinking things
would always be this way, that home
would always be there, with family, not alone.

Never has the word held more weight: alone
like scissors to the nets that kept you safe
and in the truest sense of the word, you’re not home-
less, but it’s like being forced to fly with clipped wings.
Trying to remember how you dreamt of so many things
and you know you have to embrace fear, have faith

that this life is possible with enough self-belief and faith,
that you will have to build walls of arms, so you’re not alone
and force yourself to remember all the things
that seem so painful now, that you will be safe
because there are angels spreading wings
to guide you, and where you land will be your home.

Follow your heart home, and you won’t be alone.
Papier-mâché your faith, and you will be safe
as you spread your wings, you’ll see so many things.

Acts of Kindness

poems

After writing this post, I redrafted a poem from a couple of years ago (something I’m meaning to do with a lot of poems). The act of kindness described in this post made me think of a workshop with Deanna Rodger, where the prompt “what’s the kindest thing you’ve done?” inspired an earlier draft of the poem below. Let me know what you think.

The last kind thing I did was spending
money on something I had no interest in.
I did that for someone else.

Thinking about kindness now,
it’s tied up to money somehow:
an exchange. A smart black suit,

food and bills. After a month
I wanted to raise money for charity,
wanted to run further than I’d been before.

Lately, I’ve felt tension in my back;
weekends and 9-5s do not line up.
Because we all need money, don’t we?

And so it seems, I want my own
gratification more than I want
to help move things forward from this pain.

The Norwich Radical: My One Year Anniversary

News, Reviews

The other week I wanted to show Bande de Filles aka Girlhood, to 6th Form students in order to get them to come along to the Feminist Club. They had been keen after having Feminista UK coming in to run a workshop with them. Sadly, my efforts at putting colour-posters up, guying popcorn and even buying the DVD specifically to show the film were wasted at this time. It was rather depressing to hear the music at the start repeat in an empty classroom. I guess they’re overworked. And as an English Mentor, I keep giving them extra reading to do as it is!

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I’ve been writing for The Norwich Radical for a year now, where I look at the arts through a feminist lens. Girlhood was a film I highlighted for its Feminist credentials. So, I thought this would be an opportune time to highlight the articles I’ve written thus far. You can get a whole list by clicking here.

In order of appearance:

I’m Sorry You’re Offended

Sirens at Soho Theatre

Soho Comedy: Women, ‘It’s Like They’re Real People’

Emmy the Great: Oslo, Hackney

The Bechdel Test Fest

Women of the World Festival 2015: Part 1 and Part 2

Three Women Poets

Women Fashion Power: Not a Multiple Choice Question

Woman Verses World

The Place for Poetry: Fragment and Process, Visual Culture and Performance

The Last Word

Soon Every House Will Have One

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To Kill a Mockingbird – Is it Just Me?

In Defence of Telling Girls They Can

Let’s Talk About Sex: The Institute of Sexology and Sex in the Afternoon

Feminist Picks: Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Homework: Molly Naylor and Katie Bonna

Arts Funding: Young People, Women and Intersectionality

Suffragette: The Fight is Not Over

The Hollow of The Hand

Hannah Silva’s ‘Shlock!’

The World Goes Pop

Warsan Shire’s Her Blue Body

Richard Yates: An Accidental Feminist?

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The Burning House

News

A burning house made from sound. Five voices salvage all they can from the wreckage. A navigation of all that we lose, find and construct in times when facing the loss of what we consider home and our heritage.

Over the past few months, I have been working on poetry for an Apples & Snakes’ Home Cooking podcast, produced by Post-Everything, and featuring myself and other Burn After Reading poets. It features tracks from Rachel Long, Will Tyas (read by Antosh Wojcik), Sophie Fenella, Carmina Masoliver, Antosh Wojcik. The production is beautiful, with a great balance between the sound of each poet’s voice, and the musical tones throughout it.

Click here to listen.

It also marks about a year since my own production of a Home Cooking podcast for She Grrrowls.

Published on Love You Madly

News, Uncategorized
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Illustration by Lance Tooks

After writing about the film Amy, I thought I would share my publication on some poetry I wrote inspired by another iconic jazz musician: Nina Simone.

The poems were curated by Lisa Alvarado and also include a contribution from Toni Stuart, who I had the pleasure of meeting last year and who has since performed at She Grrrowls.

 

You can read the poems on the Love You Madly website.

Book Review: Talk you round till dusk by Rebecca Tantony

Reviews

I received a copy of Rebecca Tantony’s Talk you round till dusk by illustrator Anna Higgie, who I met last year when I performed at BoomTown. You can have a peak inside the book to see the beautiful illustrations here. You can also buy some of her work from the book at her Etsy shop.

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I fell in love with this book after reading the first piece and it’s become one of my favourite books from Burning Eye Books.  The pieces flow between flash fiction, poetry and short stories, each piece with strikingly vivid imagery and captivating stories. Slipping between third and first person, placing a ‘you’ between lines of poetry, leaving you wondering where the stories lie between autobiographical and fiction. This use of the lyrical ‘I’ is something I always find fascinating, and enjoy the element of play this offers.

Much of the work deals with relationships and searching, love and travel. At times it’s heart-breaking: ‘he only liked women who felt safe without colour and peroxide to hide behind.’ At other times it’s liberating:

‘What did you do that for?’

‘I did it for me,’ she said, before the wind set her hair free, spilling it across the sky.

From the statement ‘women don’t normally drink pints,’ I could immediately relate. When the next page spoke of Andalucia, I recalled fond memories of Nerja. Tantony managed to capture the feeling of the place, and its pages fuelled my excitement to carry out the same path and live in Spain: ‘Instead of breaking up we had moved to Spain’ hit me with its poignancy, and yet its humour. With orange blossoms showing the direction for discovery at the end, there is a perfect balance of reality and romance.

Different pieces are intercepted with short poetic descriptions and musings, like notes in a travel journal, such as ‘I found your at sunrise and fell in love with a combination of body parts’. The collection takes the reader across the world, from Spain to India, Cyprus, San Francisco, through a Californian road-trip, to Paris, to Mexico, and ending back in Bristol. Through the turbulence of many characters, of wanderings and wondering whether ‘we might not make it back together in one piece’, at the end of one year and the start of a next, bubbling with excitement with the journeys we might go on, it seems apt to end on the sentiment of We are Braver This Way. In it we find the title quotation: ‘I’ll talk you round till dusk and when the final countdown/comes we’ll be dancing, won’t we?’ Whether we get the happy ending we long for is up to you.

Talk you round till dusk is available from Burning Eye Books (2015) for £9.99.

New Year’s Eve: Resolution Time

News

I had a mini-meltdown last night after a syncing error deleted five notes and I could only remember two. However, I knew the most important one was the one about my goals – a refreshment from my five year plan, which I created back in 2012.

I achieved some of the things on it, such as getting published by Nasty Little Press, and performing at festivals like Latitude and Bestival. However, I have to say that working in the job I’ve been in the past three and a half years has kept me from achieving some of the things I might have done had I worked on a more part-time basis. Arguably, I could have made better use of holidays, but you can’t be productive all the time, and relationships need nurturing, holidays need to be had.

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I’ve made a detailed plan for what I want to achieve in the first half of the year:

  • Save £2,000 more
  • Start learning Spanish regularly (Duo Lingo, Rosetta Stone, Hive Meetings)
  • Volunteer to teach English at work and outside of work
  • Roundhouse project
  • Writing: more poems, novel and show
  • Prepare manuscripts for publication in 2017

In August/September I hope to apply for jobs in Spain. Some may argue that I should just keep plodding on, maybe ask to go part time, find a more suitable job in the creative industries, or just jump right in and go freelance. However, I’m still relatively young and have friends who have done similar things, or are doing similar things. I’ve always tried to push myself out of my comfort zone, and if I land somewhere like Madrid, maybe I could end up making my poetry more global. I may move more slowly than others, but that’s okay. In some ways the things I want to do go against my nature, but more than anything I need to enjoy the journey, appreciate the present and manage to keep the future in mind without that being my focus.

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I am a creature of habit, but new habits can be made and old ones can be broken. I’m thinking that my priorities for 2016 will look a little something like this (aside from the day job):

  1. Reading and writing
  2. Volunteer work (running clubs, EFL/EAL teaching)
  3. Physical and mental health
  4. Learn Spanish
  5. Performing/recording new poems

So, a Happy New Year to all!

I plan to have a quiet one with my boyfriend Matt, having a take-away and walking to a quiet patch to maybe have a drink on a picnic blanket if the weather is nice. I’ve also booked us tickets for ‘Christmas at Kew’ on New Year’s Day!