“The female body is a political space.”
At Brighton Fringe’s event of Queer The Mic, we sat down in a dark den and talked to Joelle about performing Blue Now, from the film by Derek Jarman, with Russell Tovey, Travis Alabanza and Jay Bernard; her thoughts on spoken word vs poetry and its class divide, the gay scene in the 80s and now, founding SLAMbassadors and OutSpoken London as well as mentoring young poets.
Watch our dramatic set on Youtube.
Joelle Taylor is an award-winning poet, playwright and author. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year (2022), Taylor is the host and co-curator of Out-Spoken, the UK’s premier poetry and music club, currently resident at the Southbank Centre. A former UK slam champion, she founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s youth slam championships, in 2001 and was its Artistic Director and National Coach until 2018. Taylor is the author of three plays, a forthcoming novel and four poetry collections, including C+nto & Othered Poems, which won the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Ondaatje Prize. Her documentary Butch was recently featured on BBC Radio 4.
CREDITS: Poetry To Your Eears is an independent podcast co-hosted and co-produced by Tom O’Dwyer and Éloïse Armary. The episode was recorded at The Brunswick in June 2023. The soundtrack is ‘Dans la peau’ by Circus Marcus and the art cover is by Charlotte Gray - @grayglues.
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32 - Joelle Taylor