"We laugh bent double, tears in our eyes, though the laughing don’t laugh out the sadness. We laugh until our shoulders pulse to breathless sobs. Taste the salt from our eyes and sweet from our nostrils. Shake off the shame flaked like dead skin around us. Sweep what the wind is too weak to carry. Keep a small mound for the corner shrine, to wonder on how that dust was first a fist, a heavy silence, rejection and fight."

Listen to Writer, Poet and Musician Brother Portrait's piece 'Hold Me Through These Dreams', commissioned by Free Word for How To Be Kind.

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"I was thinking a lot about mindfulness. How it can help with noticing when we are being cruel to ourselves which then leads us to gently adjust ourselves back to kind thoughts. I think mindfulness can be a great teacher of kindness as it requires one to be radically honest with themselves in order to become mindful of one's full self and surroundings. In this poem the shadow is that part of the poet that is confronted with this personal radical truth that shows the hard emotional and spiritual work it takes to cultivate loving kindness of self. Ultimately, even though it's kinda long, it pays off to be kind to ourselves in order to be kind(er) to those around us."

Listen to Writer and Poet Belinda Zhawi’s ‘be kind to your shadow’, commissioned by Free Word for How To Be Kind.

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Enjoy this podcast with Creative Strategist Suzanne Alleyne and CEO & Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre, Amanda Huxtable, exploring how preconceptions of how ‘success’ and ‘power’ affect our mindsets. This conversation draws on neurology to begin to explore what is happening in our brains when we acquire or lose power and what this might mean for our own power and agency. Part of Free Word's Finding Power In Isolation season.

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A poem by Talia Randall.

Household

Father’s beard is a swarm of bees.

Brother can’t remember which teenage mutant turtle is which.

Sister builds an igloo out of choc-ices.

Mother pays for everything.

The stray cat visits and eats tuna off the posh china.

Father calls the cat Jeremy.

Father sees himself in Jeremy.

Sister sees herself in brother.

Brother sees himself in the TV.

Mother realises she left herself in the old country.

On the night they get cable

they invite the neighbours round for a séance.

They rent the house from a giant

who sometimes thinks about eating them and sometimes forgets they exist.

One day they buy it

(with money, they had run out of beans).

For breakfast they eat lard and avocado sandwiches

And Jeremy does the weekly bills, “too much on toilet-paper” he says.

The UK is facing a housing crisis unlike anything seen in recent history. Priced out of their homes and unable to secure permanent housing, Generation Rent are unable to put down roots in their communities.

Change is long overdue.

Listen back to an incendiary night of poetry and reflection from Spread the Word’s Young People’s Laureate Theresa Lola, poets Amaal Said and Seraphima Kennedy and illustrator Olivia Twist.

Immerse yourself in this digital sound installation as poet Amina Jama takes you through a 1990s migrant Somali living room paying homage to the rich Somali culture, Black Britishness, migration, and the creativity that arises from displacement. Grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable…

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Listen back to the launch of Somali-British writer Amina Jama’s debut poetry collection, exploring the legacy of poetry and art, and the ways we are influenced by the voices that have come before us.

Edited by Jacob Sam-La Rose and published by Flipped Eye, A Warning To The House That Holds Me responds to the work of Safia Ehillio, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ocean Vuong, Caroline Bird and most prominently Frida Kahlo. Amina Jama draws on experiences of home, autonomy and passage, writing in conversation with Kahlo and exploring the varied and unusual spaces some call home.

This podcast features readings from some of the freshest, most exciting voices in the UK poetry and performance scene including poets Ola Elhassan, Amaal Said, Sumia Jaama, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Hibaq Osman and musician Dulaeh Oke. Hosted by poet and visual artist Ruth Sutoyé.

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How do explorations of our personal histories inform our understanding of home?

Rathbones Folio Prize and Ted Hughes Award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus, multi-award-winning poet and memoirist Hannah Lowe and acclaimed writer, historian and producer Colin Grant have all written compellingly about their fathers’ experiences emigrating from Jamaica to the UK. How have they interpreted these shared, yet distinct, family stories in their work, and how has it shaped them as writers?

Listen back as celebrated writers Raymond Antrobus, Hannah Lowe and Colin Grant explore stories of Caribbean fatherhood. In collaboration with Arvon.

The event is introduced by Andrew Kidd, Arvon’s Chief Executive and Artistic Director.

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Our country is in the middle of a housing emergency. Failure to provide enough social homes is the root cause of the housing emergency. Yet the number of social homes being built is at its lowest for 70 years with over one million households on the waiting list. We need to fix the broken housing system.

Listen back to the conversation with housing and homelessness charity Shelter featuring the first dedicated LGBTQI+ crisis and community centre The Outside Project, author Luan Goldie, poet and campaigner Kojo Apeagyei and Liza Begum.

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"I know it’s all a matter of rebuilding one’s life. In many ways it’s a matter of surviving and living under another sun, but how was I to do that?"

Listen back to this conversation with writers Long Litt Woon and Zakiya Mckenzie, exploring the power of nature as a source of healing and belonging.

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