YouTube video by VerseCycle

YouTube video by Louisa Guise

On Tuesday, March 13, I saw Lenelle Moïse’s latest work in progress, Ache What Make, at the month-long Women Center Stage Festival in New York.Moïse is Haitian-American, and “Ache What …

When did you start writing and why? I wrote my first poem when I was about five or six years old. You can actually see a selection of my old school work on my website. Some of my spelling is not ve…

When did you start writing and why? When I was six years old, 1965 (‘Roman times’, as I tell the children during my school visits). I already had a thirst for poetry as I loved Dr Seuss…

Coming to you live from the Spoken Word stage at Out and Wild, the UK’s biggest festival for lesbian, bi, trans and queer women and those who are non-binary! This conversation with the delightful Leilah King has everything you could hope for: laughing, rhyming, swooning, and a whole lot of poetry reading. Tune in to hear Leilah speak about gender nonconformity in football, her journey as a neurodivergent performance poet, and how being half-Iranian affects her experience as a queer woman. CW: mental health, manic state, gendered violence   References: Midnight Picnics in Tehran (2019) We Are Hungry for Androgyny (2023) Polari Press Mary Oliver Sam Kerr Audre Lorde’s Zami Travis Alabanza John Steinbeck’s East of Eden The Grapes of Wrath Charles Bukowski Ivan Coyote’s The Tomboy Survival Guide James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room John Betjeman Philip Larkin Soft Butch Time of the Month Gay on Wye   Questions you should be able to respond to after listening: -      Leilah reflects on being a writer as well as a performer. How does performance affect her writing? -      What was Leilah’s open mic night called and why did she set it up? -      Who are some of the writers that have inspired Leilah? Who inspires you? -      Leilah speaks about her intersecting experiences of being queer, neurodivergent and half-Iranian. How does your queerness relate to other parts of your identity?