A NEW NOW

JM

Okay, so currently, I’m just working on my performance and writing and building a sort of a portfolio. I’ve still got one more year of university to do. And to be honest, I think there’s quite a lot of pressure on young poets to get published work out there quickly. I was speaking to some of the other poets at Shambala Festival recently, one of whom had a collection published at my age currently; 22. She’s 28 now, but she was saying, that while it was obviously a great experience to be published at that age, there’s a lot of things she regrets. And it really resonated with me. For example, if you have a collection published, you can’t submit to some competitions, or take part in a bunch of schemes and stuff. So, you kind of limit yourself. In a sense an early collection can be a kind of prison. Joe Hakim, who’s a quite prominent poet in Hull’s poetry scene, gave me the same advice. If you’re not feeling ready, just wait. So, I’ve been going out and doing as many performance poetry gigs as possible, as opposed to focusing on just page work. And that’s been going very well. I won the Shambala slam, which was great for me. And that was to a crowd of nearly 1000 people. As a result of that, it’s been quite busy these past few months with commissions and whatnot. 

DE

What with the rise of slams, and other live opportunities, what are your thoughts on the relationship of poetry for the shared air of performance and the printed page? I ask as someone who comes from the tradition of the book, so I’m fascinated, if as you say, it’s a matter of readiness, or relevance.  

JM

I think a real testament to that is Joelle Taylor winning the T.S. Eliot award. She’s primarily a spoken word poet. Recently, in an article she wrote for the Young Poets Network as part of The Poetry Society, she argues that a lot of people in the Arts look down on spoken word poetry, seeing it as lesser form, often because of its accessibility. Accessibility is something I definitely take into consideration when writing my own pieces. As a performance poet, if live communication isn’t your main drive, nothing will resonate with an audience. You want to work with your audience not against them. 

GS

Yeah, so the emphasis is completely different in terms of how it’s initially conceived.

JM

It completely disregards the work of a lot of performance poets that have been performing for a long, long time. So, for example, John Berkavitch, a very prominent spoken word performer, is also kind of like my mentor with Apples and Snakes, which is a popular spoken word poetry organisation. There’s been so many, from Attila the Stockbroker, Benjamin Zephaniah, Salena Godden, John Cooper Clarke, of course, so I’m just part of the next generation coming in and building on work that has already existed.

DE

Would you say your work is activated by emotion or image? A lot of work that inspires me starts with an image, or line, and not an idea. Writing therefore becomes an act of discovery. 

JM

To be honest, it’s mainly emotions that drive my work. A lot of my best pieces came out of a place of anger, or extreme joy. So, an example I could give you is The Green Flame, which is a spoken word piece that I think Giles saw me perform at The Moth Club, and that’s about navigating between two cultures and coming to terms with them. At the same time, it doesn’t just come out of emotion. It’s also inspired by works I’ve seen. So, I remember I was reading Pablo Neruda at the time, and there are some images that I use that reference some of his own images. I don’t want my poetry to be emotionally preachy, I want it to utilise the techniques I’ve seen in a lot of the writers that I really love reading. Defining myself as a punk, many early poems were written from a place of anger. But recently, a lot of my page poetry has become more joyful or reflective. I wrote a poem called Pirates, which is about showering with your partner, and it’s just kind of a cheesy love poem. And that got shortlisted for the Creative Future awards. I want to start using poetry as a way to think things through and sort of understand myself and my surroundings better. I wrote a poem called If Lazarus Did Not Want To Live, and I mean, I come from a very religious family, who at the moment are not super accepting of me being trans. So, I was just reimagining that story Lazarus and transifying it, I guess. I’m thinking of what it’d be like to have a part of you come back to life. In my case, it was all about my deadname, which was Jemima. And that identity as a devoted daughter who did everything for them, being revived whenever I go back home,

DE

That’s a very powerful phrase to refer to your birth time as your dead name. It’s also very generous to have written the poem, trying to explain to your parents your personal journey on their terms?

JM

Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of a lot of the work that I’m drafting now does have strong references to biblical scripture. Because, at the end of the day, I want my parents to understand me as a person. And so, a lot of the times my poetry has been a way of kind of getting through to them, getting them to understand where I’m coming from, and the feelings that I’m feeling. And even moments of appreciation as well. It’s not all just, you know, bad blood between me and my parents, there’s moments of real tenderness and joy as well. So, trying to capture all of that in my writing, because it’s a lot easier to send them a poem, and then have that conversation with them. 

GS

Yes, so you’re helping to bridge the generations, which is crucial. Right now, we’ve probably got the largest number of generations alive at the same time than we’ve ever had, so we need to bind together to create true communities.

JM

Yeah. Yeah. I think my poetry is definitely trying to bridge the gap. Well, some of it anyways. The poems relating to my family are the ones where I feel most vulnerable. Those are the poems I feel I would save, if I were to write a collection, as opposed to performance, if that makes sense. Like, especially when you perform, you want to do stuff that really gets the crowd going and writing depressing poems about my family and performing them probably would put a dampener on most people’s mood. So those are definitely poems that I’m going to explore more formally.

GS

This is my opportunity to talk a little bit about the punk thing! I’m reading Do What You Want – the story of Bad Religion. And obviously, they write a lot of political and social commentary. And, what you said before about how your poetry comes from extreme emotion, they had the same thing in their lyrics:  they see things that they’re very angry about and, and one of the challenges is how to put across the message in such a way that it doesn’t come across as preachy and as a way that actually helps people to understand what’s happening, and to then raise awareness. 

JM

I 100% agree. And I think that’s the real difficulty sometimes with doing like, radically left-wing performance poetry: you don’t want to be preaching at people, you want to engage with them and get them thinking, but not in a way that would patronise them or look down on them. It’s a very fine balance between being preachy and being an engaging, moving speaker.

DE

With the danger always being that you’re preaching to the already converted.

JM

Exactly. To be honest, poetry is definitely a very leftist activity. You can get away with saying, you know, fuck the Tories, and no one bats an eye. So, it’s quite a supportive scene in that sense. But yeah, I think it’s worth sort of going a bit deeper and bringing in nuance to these debates, which is what current political debate lacks.

DE

And there’s very little nuance in punk. So, how do you define the punk aesthetic now?

JM

I can’t speak for everyone, but it is a matter of being your truest self, and getting to a point of being anti-establishment, where you can break down oppressive systems, from white supremacy onwards. It’s about being unafraid to lose something, personally.  So, I’m thinking of Nadia Javed speaking out against abusers and the huge financial costs that had on her and the other women who stood up to abusers. It’s about not being afraid to show solidarity in that sense, and practically doing stuff to help communities as opposed to just you know, tweeting about it. 

DE

On paper that was the aim of both communism and the counter-culture.

JM

That was the original idea. Yeah, exactly. And I know a few punks who let that side of punk down. But when you look back on that early 70s period, the fire was there. Rock Against Racism, etc. That’s why I love the early 70s punk scene so much, the history behind it. I’m thinking of The Beat and other bands who had black musicians who got to perform to crowds as a direct result of solidarity from white punk bands. We need that sort of solidarity, and then thinking of Idles, and the controversy they had, and Nadine Shah being paid way less than she was worth, just for the sake of ticking a box on diversity. 

There were also a few instances, during the BLM Movement, where it was just radio silence from bands who have been so vocal about systemic injustice in music. It just pissed me off, to be honest.

Fair enough. If you’re not like calling yourself punk or whatever, punk at its very definition had its roots in anti-establishment. And it’s protest, and it’s countercultural, and then to literally just, you know, stand idly by while people are literally getting murdered. So many musicians posted a black square on Instagram, like that was supposed to be solidarity with, you know, people dying on the streets, then deleted it two weeks later, because it didn’t go with their feed or whatever. It was so infuriating to see. Like, what is that black square gonna do? And you know what, it was harmful because people were following that hashtag to know what was happening in the movement, and you click on that, and it’s just like, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and it’s just black squares? 

I do some work with Greater Manchester Tenants Union. They helped me when I was trying to get my money back from a letting agent that charged me illegal re-letting fees. They managed to get it back the same day we went to the agent’s office together. So, it’s just sort of about repaying that energy and time that those people spend and do work for the Union as well. And union work is huge, just spreading awareness about unions as well, especially with punk. And like white punk bands, a lot of their audience is working class, the white British public, so it’s all about spreading awareness of proactive action that can benefit society. I’m saying this because I’ve noticed this sense of defeatism in English culture. I think we’re seeing a little bit of that with like, these energy crises. I just don’t think Brits have been raised in a cultural way to constantly fight against authority – whereas the French riot for everything. It’s very much a ‘keep calm and carry on’ sort of thing. But it’s getting to the tipping point now where people have just had enough. So many businesses are folding. People aren’t going to have a livelihood. We’ve had huge rises in poverty in the UK. So, it’s only a matter of time until we have some form of peasants’ revolt, the only real act of practical British resistance.

I went into school with The Poetry Society and worked with young kids in Hull to develop a poem – a ballad – about that piece of historical action. And one of the key things that I brought into my workshops is this idea of revolting against authority and being pushed to that point by being exploited and used by the upper classes, and then making it explicitly clear that there is a parallel between our time and theirs.

GS

So, you’re using and finding the real poetry in work for and about the community.

JM.

Yes. The GMTU for instance, actively stop immigration raids, unfair evictions, and provide practical responses to systemic injustice in the housing sector.