This Be the Verse: 5 Poets for Students
Seldom will one go to a protest and not be witness to performance art; so I thought I would write a post on five poets / poems for students to introudce them to poetry as politics.
Despite knowing that spoken word was, this is not terminology that was on my degree. It’s an overarching term for poetry that’s read aloud. This poetry may contain bits of comedy, theatre, storytelling, jazz, rap, and more. In this post I will take you through five of my favourite poets I think are relevant for students, whether those students are studying poetry or not.
Salena Godden
Salena Godden is someone I found out about quite by accident, when I was doing research for the reading on my dissertation. She’s an English poet, author, activist and essayist amongst other things — of Jamaican-Irish heritage. It was through her personal essay ‘Shade’ in Nikesh Shukla’s The Good Immigrant (2016) that drew me to her, then finding out she was a poet. I haven’t been the same since. ‘Courage is Muscle’ in the video above is an excellent poem and a testament to the subgenre of poetry I call ‘protest poetry.’ Whilst poetry by its very existence as art can be argued to be protest, there is a subgenre within that which speaks truth to power that she perfectly embodies in much of her work, like ‘Red’ and ‘Pessimism is for Lightweights.’
My Favourite: Shade (2016)
Riz MC AKA Riz Ahmed
Riz MC is someone I first found about in 2014 in the film Nightcrawler with Jack Gyllenhaal, or as Riz MC is known in the acting world, Riz Ahmed. Having been a fan since 2014, it wasn’t until 2016 I found out he was a writer, seeing his essay ‘Airports and Auditions’ in The Good Immigrant which chronicles being Muslim in the American film and television industry, consistently being typecast as a terrorist and how auditions taught him how to get through airports (in a post-9/11 world). In 2018/19, I found out he was a rapper and poet, finding him on The Hamilton Mixtape spitting bars on ‘Immigrants (Get the Job Done)’, on race, identity and the British Empire.
I soon saw that his work followed a similar trajectory to my own and that’s one example of representation — where diversity and representation were aligned because diversity and representation are not the same. That despite him having a completely different upbringing to myself, both culturally and somewhat geographically, there was representation. Riz Ahmed is a British-Pakistani actor, writer, poet-rapper, and activist. In his lyrics on Britain, identity and race, there is also “twoness” of being Pakistani and British; I found a common a ground here, that I was both Black and British, and we were united in the consistent where are you froms and the assumptions people have of British people of colour… that we must be from somewhere else.
For students looking to learn more about politics of race and identity, he is a must-listen. His album Englistan stands proudly alongside Brit(ish) by Afua Hirsch, DuBois and even Edward Said’s Orientalism. When we talk about decolonial spaces, I would argue albums like Englistan have as just as many value as DuBois or even Edward Said’s Orientalism in these discussions.
My Favourite: I Ain’t Being Racist But; Where You From
AFLO. the poet
AFLO. the poet is a Brighton-based spoken word artist and PhD student at the University of Brighton. From an early age, her work has been influenced by hip-hop and grime. With less than eighteen months performance experience under her belt, she is also a poet I would recommend to students, covering themes such as: mental health, trauma recovery, misogynoir, politics, racism and the Black experience. She uses her art as a conduit for healing and self-expression while simultaneously connecting with the audience and wider community. AFLO. has recently picked up more attention through her activism and has performed to crowds of thousands at Black Lives Matter protests, using poetry as a tool to educate the masses on topics like fetishisation, colonialism and police brutality.
Favourites: I have only heard two poems by AFLO. (hyperlinked above) and they’ve both been KO; I look forward to the day she releases a book and is selling out arenas like Brixton Academy!
Roger Robinson
Roger Robinson is a Northampton-based British writer, dub poet and performer. He is the second author of Caribbean heritage to win the T.S Eliot Prize (2020), only after Derek Walcott in 2010. Roger is the first Black British author to win it. Having been writing for over twenty years, he is respected throughout the industry. Born in Britain but raised in Trinidad, one could say he is as much British as he is Trini, but that’s a debate you will have to have with him! A spoken word performing artist in London during the early 1990s, he is also the lead vocalist for King Midas Sound, the author of numerous poetry books, and my uncle. His last book A Portable Paradise is the poetry collection of our times, encompassing this aura of Black British fever, especially in the ongoing injustices committed against us — from the Windrush to police violence. The poem ‘Windrush’ stayed with me, as did ‘Woke’ (on the unflinching changing forms of Black oppression). To put it into perspective, ‘Woke’ is the UK response to Ava DuVernay’s Netflix doc 13TH.
If there ever was text that showed why Black Lives Matter is also a UK problem, this is it, including poems on Windrush and Grenfell, showing The UK is not innocent and the sun never really set on the English empire.
For students on courses like policing, international relations, criminology, sociology, English, creative writing, history, social work, social and community practice, childhood, education, Black studies, and so much more, this is a text for many reading lists, and is perfectly placed to help decolonise the curriculum, in that buzzterm of today in UK schools higher education.
Favourites: Windrush (it reminds me of my grandparents)
Melissa Lozada-Oliva and Olivia Gatwood
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is an American poet. She is certainly one of my favourites working today and will contradict everything popular ideas have dictated poetry is. When the ivory towers of British academia tell you that poetry is about line breaks and form and structure et al, her work will discard that. When lecturers limit certain topics, Lozada-Oliva asks why. Not all poetry is nice to read, or delicate or about easy-going subjects. She makes those issues accessible. Her book Peluda explores intersectionality, including Latina identity, feminism, hair loss, and belonging. This is the sort of poetry that should be on English and creative writing degrees because it talks about identity. What can be more student-centric than exploring who you are?
Olivia Gatwood is an American poet from Albuquerque in the state of New Mexico. Not only is she a fantastic spoken word artist, she is an educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her performances have been featured on HBO, Huffington Post, the BBC et al, detailing her experiences of growing up in the US and Trinidad, navigating childhood, coming-of-age, relationships and womanhood. Her work is right at the juglar. Fantastic!
With both these poets, men [mainly] will need to be comfortable in themselves to get along. If you are not, it will cause upset. The fragile “not all men” brigade will probably hate much of their work, particularly Gatwood’s. Both of these acts are making waves in the United States of America and I just want them to come to Britain and take the British poetry scene by storm.
