Showing posts with label Raymond Antrobus poet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raymond Antrobus poet. Show all posts

Thursday, 21 February 2013

If The Floor Could Dance It Would Dance On You (Poem)

This is your room.

It’s a cell.

You can have everything you want except the key for the door.

If you ever get the key (which you won’t) stay here and use it to scrawl poetry into the wall, but don’t you dare call yourself a prisoner.

You are mad and you have to learn to speak without your voice digging tunnels to run through like a victim of yourself.

There are other heads, in other cells, holding out their ears for something that breaths quietly.

But you will turn them to the dark and they will want to chop off their arms for being within your reach.

Every colour you see is wet, colour dries nothing.

Your feet will need more faith if they are to carry you across the rust into the part of you that’s this dark and scratched up.

Create your own season and let it touch you, weather reports are useless here.

Tomorrow morning you will hear instructions, follow them until you’re somewhere warm.

You will see what you thought were walls was actually your perspective inspired by the lines between the last poem you grated into the air with your teeth.

Don’t let anyone see how the plot rattles in your head like marbles in a whisky bottle.

They will judge you and your sentence will just be another thing you can’t finish.

Love will one day become a type of grief and you won’t survive if it’s the only thing that feeds you.

Your parents were wrong; you can be wiser than them.

You will never fit your mother into words because words aren’t beautiful enough.

I will write until I lose God and find out I am a religion.

I just noticed there is a waiting room in my heart and there is no entrance.

Ask your Grandma to write you a letter about what it’s like to be young.

Chase the light out the sky; it only wants to criticize you.

Run up to the first person you see and tell them your eyes fell out their pocket.

Notice yourself reading this and then imagine you wasted your time writing it.

The best liar you will ever meet will make love look easy.

Count up to a high number, start at one and stop when you start to feel lonely, that’s the number of days you’ve walked the streets feeling like that.

Get on the Underground in the morning and smile just to be good at being different.

I was standing in a warehouse one night, the walls were pealing and the only light came from a projector that was playing a film about the dying art of shadows.

If there was any sense in my direction I’d stop here and let peace stand next to me in the dark and whisper something profound into the room.

I don’t want to be anything but a temple strong enough to handle love.

What would Lego men make of you?

If tears cried you do you think you’d taste like vinegar?

There are flowers left on the road side, they are dead, the flowers I mean. Does that imply the grievers have moved on or is it still too painful for them to keep some things alive?

How to be wise – observe animals in their habitat and surround yourself with older people and children – write down everything they say.

I have just walked passed a man sitting down in the street holding a cardboard cut out of himself. The sign of a good life is never cut from cardboard.

All the cold places I can think of are quiet.

Why did I feel nothing when I read a headline that said Children dead in a house fire?

I’d like to find the universe where trees chop down people and study people work instead of wood work.

Do not think too much about the words you say, the heart doesn’t think – it’s a beautifully stupid organ.

Get up and walk down the street and start a conversation with the first person you see that’s singing.

If every ear in the world went deaf would the human race become closer or would we isolate ourselves even more than we already do?

If you made friends with death do you think it would live for you?

Thursday, 13 December 2012

How Spoken Word In Education Is Changing The Landscape For Modern Poets

This year Goldsmith University launched their first Spoken Word Education module as part of the Teacher / Writer MA program and I’ve been lucky enough to be one of the six London Spoken Word poets piloting it. The other five are Indigo Williams, Keith Jarrett, Dean Atta, Cat Brogan and Pete The Temp – If you know your Spoken Word poets you’ll be familiar with these names.

Since September we’ve been going into a secondary school in East London and leading lessons on poetry and performance as well as setting up a Spoken Word poetry after school club which had over eighty sign ups from years 7, 8 and 9.


Peter Kahn coordinates the program, a teacher at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Chicago. He runs the largest school-based spoken word club in the world and is featured in the award-winning documentary Louder Than a Bomb. 

The project is also partnered by some of the UK’s leading institutions and organisations such as Apples and Snakes, Avron and Spread the word. 

We challenge the idea that “poems are old fashioned and have to rhyme” and we get students talking and writing from their personal experiences to generate poetry in their own voices. Many teachers have already given positive feedback about the impact of having poets in their school. Some students really open up in their poetry and it can get emotional. This has been a good way to hear the kids that are calling for help. Ultimately we have a lot of fun with language, performance games and watching the kids develop as young poets. We’re all coming across more and more talented young poets and we call it our mission to nurture talent and give poets higher platforms to aspire to. This will change the landscape of Spoken Word and poetry for a new generation. 

I didn’t discover Spoken Word until I was twenty but if a quality poet came into my school when I was fourteen I definitely would have been hooked sooner.

Some of the top Spoken Word Educators in the country including Jacob Sam La Rose, Simon Mole, Polarbear, Charlie Dark and Hollie McNish all make a living mentoring young poets and improving the standards of Spoken Word poetry nationwide.

The more exposure top quality poets receive the more impact Spoken Word poetry will make as an art form.

If you know of any schools that would be interested in setting up a Spoken Word Club please contact : mrpkahn@hotmail.com

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! New Animated poem (Autistic Pieces)



Special thanks to the amazing Armand Cordero for the animation.

Autistic Pieces is a collaboration project between musician, singer-song writer Alex Patten & poet Raymond Antrobus. Their first EP can be purchased for only £4 below.





http://autisticpieces.bandcamp.com/album/autistic-pieces-ep

Thursday, 9 August 2012

Cue The Poet 'Backstage In Ireland'

Write a love poem, step into a cupboard big enough for your friends and shout it out - everyone should do this before they die.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

A Secret Poem For You

Write your secrets.

When they want eyes,
ask mine.

Trust my love to know
how to move
                   around you
          with the ease of waking,
something I do every day.

I will take on the colour
of all your shade,
           you will never leave me
without your ghost.

I have not forgotten
any song I heard around you,
my entire body
               carries these sounds,
my heart always wants
                    to give you noise.

This is how you are with me
when you are  not.    

Life cannot go on for too long
if we are both inside it,

Our mornings are opening scenes
of a film
          about two people
          who happen to be beautiful,
no matter how many shadows they make.

Thursday, 7 June 2012

Raymond Antrobus In The Poetry Shed

I joined Adam Kammerling's Poetry Shed Series.... pretty self explanatory... Adam invites poets into his shed for poems.


I was pretty ill on the day of filming this but I sucked it up and got all aggressive.

Sunday, 3 June 2012

5am / March 25th (Poem)

I dreamt you were an owl,
you kept leaving me for the night.

You said night made you wise,
it’s the kind of darkness you came from
                               that’s why  you go back to it.

 You called me pigeon
                Because I knew how to hide
                                     in the night -

              I puffed up my chest
                           slept with all my hope
                  balled on the ledge of a broken window,
                    
              I had to get warm without you.
 I woke
           still thinking I could fly -

knowing the closest thing to me
                                                          was your shadow.