CREATIVE WRITING & SPOKEN WORD
The way the words were This month we’ve got an interview with Led By Donkeys, a new poem from Charlotte Ansell from her collection Deluge and a rare plug from me on a show I’m doing myself later this month down at Sheffield Central Library. Hope to see you there. Joe @WordlifeUK
DIGESTING HISTORY THREE COURSES OF POETRY & PERFORMANCE Wed 25 & Thu 26 March | Sheffield Central Library £10 (inc. plant based meal) Inspired by the British Library’s sold-out exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, Digesting History presents original commissions of poetry created and performed by Rachel Bower, Kayo Chingonyi and Joe Kriss that explores issues of identity, nationality and belonging. In collaboration with Sheffield-based theatre company The Bare Project, expect to be led through a theatrical performance, with food after hours at Sheffield Central Library. This event is part of Collections in Verse, a collaboration between Poet in the City, The British Library and Sheffield Libraries which is using poetry events and commissions to bring British Library exhibitions to life in five cities across the UK. More info and tickets at sheffieldlibraries.eventbrite.co.uk.
Kayo Chingonyi, Joe Kriss and Rachel Bower
Sometimes you chose to toss them into the air, to dance paper thin as butterflies, waited to see which flowers they’d grace. Tested their weight, as if worth could be determined by scales, held them close or cradled them like shells. It was never an exact science yet some were as snug as glass slippers but much more comfortable. Some came out in a rat-a-tat of machine gun fire, bullets that couldn’t be recalled; the sheer force of a waterfall, that sped and gushed. So even rocks were worn and smoothed. Maybe they were ointments or herbs with the power to heal, if only you knew how to pick the ones you needed. There were days when there was nothing left on the shelves – not even candles or prayers remained; or a surfeit you decided not to use, kept them in your pockets like pebbles. They could do no damage there. You were never once tempted to give them up; the ones you did not voice, you wrote down. It was always a love affair.
Charlotte Ansell Taken from her new collection, Deluge, available from Flipped Eye Press.
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