WORD! Online 3 - With Roger Robinson, Antony Owen and Mellow Baku
This PAST event happened on: Thu, Jul 30, 2020
- Venue:Online
- Time:19.30
- Cost:Free
- Main Contact:[email protected]
- Web Address:www.wordpoetry.co.uk
Don't miss this latest instalment in our all new series of WORD! Onlines.
This very special third edition is dedicated to Black Lives Matter and is created and hosted by WORD! Associate Artist and Guest Curator, Mellow Baku. With a host of incredible communal voices, and headline turns from Roger Robinson (animation courtesy of Malikah Holder) and Antony Owen (film by Leone Dubarry-Gurr). Trust us, it's set to be unmissable.
Watch the premier on July 30th at 7.30pm here, or on www.youtube.com/wordpoetry - or on Facebook - search 'Word!'.
**
Roger Robinson is a writer who has performed worldwide. He is the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2020, currently shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2020 and was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize , The Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize.
His latest collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ was a Newstatesman book of the year. He was chosen by Decibel as one of 50 writers who have influenced the black-British writing canon. He is an alumnus of The Complete Works and he has toured extensively with the British Council.
"His poems are deep, mature, moving and inventive."- Bernadine Evaristo for New Statesman
“One of the most important poetic voices in the UK right now”
- Raymond Antrobus
**
Antony Owen, has authored six poetry collections since 2009. His latest The Nagasaki Elder was shortlisted for the coveted Ted Hughes Award and he is one of the leading active writers on war and peace poetry in 21st century poetry.
Antony’s work is taught at regular poetry workshops in Hiroshima. His poems have been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Dutch. CND Peace Education (UK) selected Owen as one of their first national patrons in 2015, and his poems feature in a national CND peace education resource to schools. Owen is also a recipient of the 2016 Coventry Peace & Reconciliation Award for various peace projects.
"A tour de force of power and beauty. Heartfelt poetry leaving us with the impression of hope"
- Roy Mcfarlane on 'The Unknown Civillian'
“Antony Owen is the bravest British poet of his generation. He goes to places poetry doesn't visit and lingering there, crafts acts of testimony and tribute. He does what art is supposed to; raising us the highest so that we can see the deepest.
- Joe Horgan on 'The Nagasaki Elder'
**
Mellow Baku is a writer and performer of poetry, plays and songs, and has gigged in venues throughout UK and internationally for over 10 years, including performing music, spoken word and live looping at London Southbank, Warwick Arts, as well as gigs in Switzerland, Denmark and New York. Associate Artist with WORD! and with the Spark Arts For Children, her work is regularly commissioned for plays, storytelling and music, at Curve Leicester and Attenborough Arts. Last year she toured Manchester arts venues, Nottingham Libraries. Her work has received airplay on BBC Radio.
Born in London to a Blues singing hippie and Trinidadian Rastafarian activist writer and actor, Mellow Baku was moved to the Midlands as a child and raised in a cultic religious organisation from age 5–19. She escaped to study Fine Art in Leicester, and has been exploring ways of healing, finding, shedding identity and sharing through writing and creativity ever since.
"Suberb voice, brilliant music, a must for all"
- Courtney Pine OBE
"She understands the meaning of the words she'd singing because she's speaking from personal experience"
- Taylor, Jazz Changes
To get involved with future WORD! Online's and workshops, drop Mellow a line via [email protected]
