Why Poetry?

Discussing the Growing Form of PoetryFilm with Poet and Academic Lucy English author of the digital project the Book of Hours https://thebookofhours.org/

In episode 12 of the Verse First Poetry Podcast. I chat to Pete 'the temp' Bearder about Stage invasion: Poetry and the spoken word renaissance.While his performance and verse experiments are stellar, his videos going viral and his feature slots and workshops packed, Pete has also turned his focus to documenting the academic, technical and esoteric practices of the spoken word.as a fellow traveller in the strange and verbose land that is the fine art of putting words together. it was a pleasure to talk to him!

ThinkWriteFly sits down with Poet Roy McFarlane, talking about the role of the community poet His latest collection 'the Healing Next Time', What it means to write tragedy, oppression and state violence, and the struggle not to become defined by it & the power of being able to own your story.

Were Back! with Episode 10, Part 2 of the Verve Poetry Festival. with chats and poems from Momtaza Mehri, Theresa Lola, Sophie Collins, Vani Capildeo and Sumita Chakraborty. Each of these poets deserves an episode to themselves, but in one wonderful day in February I got to have Quick sit down interviews with all of them. our conversation presented with great poems I've gleaned from their back catalogue.

This Episode I sat down with the fantastic Nafeesa Hamid to do a Deep dive on her Collection Besharam and get real about the process of writing poems in sequence, adding 'poet' to your identity, the structure of a collection and the fear of losing/ releasing your poetry to the world.

as always If you like what you hear, please consider supporting the Podcast and other Poetry Projects on www.versefirst.org

www.patreon.com/VerseFirstPoetry

In episode 8 of the podcast, we look back to the 4 days of poetic splendour that was the Verve poetry festival that took place at the Old rep theatre Birmingham in February. Featuring discussion with Cynthia Miller and Anthony Anaxagorou alongside poetry from Inua Ellams RAP Party poets: Jess May Davies, Casey Bailey, Aliyah Hasina & Sean Colletti.

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We went to Wolverhampton Literary Festival to record with Poets Against Racism, a grassroots artivist group using spoken word to challenge divisive dialogues of white supremacy and encourage progressive discussions about race.

Proudly anti-racist, anti-fascist and channelling the UK protest art movements born in the melting pots of British inner cities. we sat down with the founder of the movement Manjit Sahota, leader of their Nottingham chapter as he brings the word to the Midlands.

featuring some fantastic poets from open micers to OG published Professionals, sharing their work on race and laying claim to the dialogue at a time where inclusion, solidarity and equality are in need of amplification.

In Episode 6 of the Pod, we sat down with Grim Chip of the picket line poets to talk the movement. The poetry of the Political and whether verse-making itself is an act of Protest.

This episode we continue the exploration of confessional verse in a Sit down with Scott Manley Hadley 'The bad boy poet' talking Masculinity, love, Pierce Brosnan, Pooping, the Perils of being emotionally vulnerable in a world that demands transparency yet punishes weakness, and dogs.

This month we sit down with Dr Angela France and talk poets as Psychogeographers, the Act of capturing the 'Truth' of a place with methods dreamt up by angry Frenchmen in 1968, But used liberally as a tool of poetics ever since.

We figure out what it is to capture a place in a poem and talk the process and development of Angela's Psychogeographic collection 'The Hill'.