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! SUPPORT VERSEFIRST! www.versefirst.org ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

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 https://www.patreon.com/VerseFirstPoetry ..read more

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. If you like the Pod, please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/VerseFirstPoetry ..read more

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 ..read more