Both BBC Words First Finalists, Billie Meredith is a poet and performer and Saf-S2E is a poet and rapper and they are active members of Young Identity. Recognised as some of the UK’s best emerging talent, they are involved in the Cities Untold project, a partnership between Young Identity, the Manchester Literature Festival and Danish literature festivals. Their commissions will be inspired by the secrets and untold narratives of a city. Saf-S2E also has an album out now, Ink is Blood and Billie's theatre work has been reviewed as brilliant in the Adhesion of Love, written by multi-award winning playwright Stephen Hornby. Billie played Walt Whitman, America's 'father of free verse.' We talk about destiny, poverty, fear, developing craft, Manchester and Africa and ask whose industrial revolution was it? With so much creative and innovative work coming out of Young Identity, this is their cultural revolution and we should probably take Saf-S2E's poetic advice, ‘Expect the Unexpected.’

Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.

Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb

Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com

Discover Billie Meredith and Saf-S2E here: www.youngidentity.org/ 

Discover Saf-S2E's album, Ink is Blood, here: https://open.spotify.com/album/08GlLcmCeC4arevzbtDZhW