And now I will start a new, fresh poem! This one is called:
As it turns out, defenestrating a politician is less impressive when their office is on the ground floor
Two tines of a plastic fork buried in the ground like some long in the root horse tooth
So what should we have for dinner tonight? ……. Dunno! What are you feeling? ….. Sigh. A daily struggle we have to daily decide. Guess we’re having nothing then. Oh, gimme a J20. Make it two please
I write my name on the gravy train as stars cascade into crushing crescendos I always tell the stars but I’m silent on you I’ve spent far too long in the fast lane, feeling all the bumps
Next door the accountants are saying: ‘people who speak of their emotions feel nothing’ and weeping silently into their spreadsheets
Gays slay the day away Be your own best mate! This is a very good night honestly Dream if you wanna go vaster
Slightly damp smelling but passionate, floating but not going anywhere Help! I’ve turned into a sentient boat. This isn’t part of the poem! Help I’m possessing the speaker of this poem! I’m so wet! I’m a boat! Help! I’ve realised how terrifying it is to be in the water
What is time but a cold slime on the sea Cow Girl!
I want to make a dress out of the razzle-dazzle spaghetti behind me Hair greasy, shines like the tinsel behind me The glitter screen is losing strands amidst the ear-splitting whoops
It is very important to use the twisty thing at the bottom to adjust the mic stand Touch it. Touch the mic Flex like Flex like Alex He struggles to lift his weights. But I’ve got hubris to keep me in shape A deep squat, deeper still becomes a sit
What if these clothes are my flesh and I have just broken the no-nudity rule?
Malaika Kegode is an award-winning writer, performer, creative producer and Associate Director at Theatre Royal Plymouth. She is based in Bristol and Plymouth. Her work is focused on uplifting and celebrating the overlooked and misunderstood. Beginning her arts career as a performance poet in 2014, Malaika has since developed her practice to encompass theatre, radio and film writing. She is a vocal advocate for creativity as a tool for healing and connection.
Winner of the Kevin Elyot Award (2022) and shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Poetry Award (2019), Malaika has also been included in the BME Power List, celebrating Bristol’s most influential Black & minority ethnic people, and was a 2021 recipient of the Apples & Snakes Jerwood Arts Poetry in Performance Award. She has performed around the UK at a number of celebrated venues, festivals and literary events, including The 100 Club, WOMAD and Hay Festival, and has worked with a wide-range of organisations as a writer, teacher and performer.
Malaika has been performing with folk-inspired prog-rock band Jakabol since 2018. Together they have performed at music and theatre venues alike – bringing a unique, exciting blend of poetry and music to diverse audiences. In 2021, Malaika and Jakabol collaborated on Outlier, which became the first piece of new writing produced for Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in 2021. Directed by Jenny Davies, Outlier fuses spoken word, original music and digital projection by Christopher Harrisson to tell Malaika’s autobiographical coming-of-age story of friendship, isolation and addiction in rural Devon. The show received critical success and fantastic audience reaction, and returned for a second run at Bristol Old Vic in 2022. The playtext for Outlier is published by Salamander Street.
Tackling themes as wide ranging as incel culture and identity in the internet age to millennial queerness and dinosaurs, Malaika’s writing has been performed around the country, including at Lyric Hammersmith, Watford Pumphouse, and Barbican Theatre Plymouth. She is an associate artist for Bristol Old Vic, part of the 2023 English Touring Theatre Nationwide Voices cohort and the current writer-in-residence at University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
As a workshop leader and mentor, Malaika has worked with organisations such as Arvon, Synergy Theatre Company and Narcotics Anonymous. As a trauma informed facilitator, she has specialised in running workshops with young and/or vulnerable people to help them realise the value of their stories. Many of the individuals Malaika has mentored have gone on to forge exciting and fulfilling careers in the arts.
Malaika has also worked film, and was the 2021 recipient of the the Eslpeth Kydd Memorial Prize for her screenwriting portfolio. She has been a curational associate for Watershed, a resident artist for Encounters Film Festival, and programme selector for a number of film festivals including Queer Vision and Tallinn Black Nights.
In 2015, Malaika founded, and continues to be artistic director and host of, Milk Poetry, an organisation that produces innovative spoken word gigs and workshops in a supportive environment across the South West, with monthly events at The Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol.
Other projects as writer and/or producer include: Rot. (tiata fahodzi); Field Notes (BBC Radio 4); Hear Her Voice (Neoteric Dance Company); Own Skin (Random Acts); The Best Ones (Inn Crowd); SheSpoke (Strike a Light); Level Up (Blahblahblah); Gloucester Slam Heats (Roundhouse); Finding Queerness in Kenya (Modern Queers); We are Not All Each Other (Black Ballad); Return to Form (Loud Poets); and her poetry collections Requite, Thalassic and Body Buffet.
Current projects include: The Colour of Dinosaurs (OTIC, Bristol Old Vic & Polka Theatre); The Combe (English Touring Theatre); Ruby, Baby (with thanks to the Kevin Elyot archive at University of Bristol Theatre Collection).
Amy Acre is a poet and editor, born in London and living in Nottingham. Her debut collection, Mothersong (Bloomsbury, 2023) is shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and was named a Book of the Year in The Telegraph, The Financial Times and California Review of Books. She runs award-winning indie publisher, Bad Betty Press.
Amy is the author of pamphlets, And They Are Covered in Gold Light (Bad Betty, 2019) and Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads (Flipped Eye, 2015), both selected as a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She’s written for Radio 4 and featured on The Last Dinosaur’s 2020 track, ‘In The Belly of a Whale’. Her work has been selected as a BBC Pick of the Week and a London Review Bookshop recommendation.
Jemma Hathaway Book Launch Friday 7th June Doors 7pm for 7.30pm on the Lightship
Jemma Hathaway likes to put words next to one another and see if they hit it off. Her poems have been featured on BBC Radio Bristol, BBC iPlayer and @bbc on Instagram. Jemma is a multiple slam-winner, was the 2020 Hammer & Tongue champion for Bristol and is a Button Poetry Short Form contest winner.
Jemma has supported Joelle Taylor, Jasmine Gardosi and Roger McGough, performed at the Royal Albert Hall and appeared on Sky Arts Life & Rhymes. She self-published her first poetry pamphlet, January in 2021. Her poems are a sticky dancefloor for the ongoing dance-off between her head and her heart. She hopes you like her moves.
About The Book
I’ve been looking everywhere for you is full of big four-letter things – life, love, loss, time and ultimately, hope. It’s a book of hellos and goodbyes, bad days and blessings, it is a healing and a homecoming … and it hopes to come home with you.
These poems take us from melanin to mountains, from stars to submarines, from hard times to soft words and set us down somewhere in that healing space between far-off galaxies and close-up magic.
This collection longs to be read in a different light – the light of midnight porches, of torches beneath blankets, of lighthouses that exist solely to warn you away from the rocks. All the lights that say, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.
‘Big things happen in small moments, writes Jemma Hathaway, and proceeds to show us just how much life can be found stuffed in the cracks of our existence.
Casting a witty, irreverent eye over the subject of her poems, Jemma chooses a playful touch which enables her to explore serious subjects without ever feeling worthy or preachy. The collection doesn’t shy away from the world’s sharp edges- racial microaggressions, homophobia, grief and mental health are some of the things she touches upon- but remains ultimately and defiantly hopeful.
The imagery swings between the expansive and the everyday, where melanin holds light like Galileo’s telescope holds the moon and Queer lives are singing kettles. Throughout, Jemma reminds the reader that love in all its various, ridiculous, wonderful forms exists in the most mundane of places.’ Kat Lyons
‘Jemma Hathaway is a beacon of light guiding you back home to yourself. Her collection is unapologetically itself and encourages you to be the same. Metaphors and similes soar, seeking to be deciphered into insightful notes of acceptance, reminding you you’re alive, and deservedly so. A vivid, compelling and compassionate collection.’ Jemima Hughes
Jemma will be supported on the night by three fantastic poets from the South-West:
Kathryn O’Driscoll Kathryn O’Driscoll is a queer, disabled poet, mentor and editor from Bath. She was the 2021 U.K. Poetry Slam Champion and a World Slam Finalist. She was longlisted for the Disabled Poets Prize and the Outspoken Prize for Performance Poetry in 2023, and the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Artist in 2022. In 2021 she was one of the featured poets on the (BAFTA winning) Sky Arts spoken word TV show Life and Rhymes. Her debut collection ‘Cliff Notes’ is available from Verve Poetry Press.
Jo Eades Since her first performance set at the inaugural Hotwells Festival of words in 2021, Jo has become a regular on the Bristol spoken word scene. She has been featured four times on BBC Radio Upload, performed on the Milk Poetry stage at Valleyfest and was headliner for Heron Books anniversary celebration last Christmas. In 2023 she won both a Rhyme Against the Tide and Milk Poetry Slam and in April this year, won the Lyra Poetry Festival Grand Slam.
Jaidah Jaidah’s written & spoken works are undeniably compelling, ask questions of us collectively & hold the primary focus of advocating alongside promoting human welfare & connection. Jaidah’s journey into writing started 3 years ago in a sanctuary of solitude, which stimulated vastly journeying the world within herself & most importantly she has been inspired by listening to the language nature speaks. Vulnerable yet powerful Jaidah’s quiet commanding presence & delivery are outward reaching & embody a courage built through her own hard-won experience. Continuously thought provoking, her words are colourful & within those colours live the essence of divine human nature.
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