I am a performance poet who collaborates with diverse people throughout the UK and abroad to share stories about what it is to be human. I am currently developing a new piece, ‘Confabulation’, about the future of memory, supported by Arts Council, England.
My first solo show, ‘Chinese Whispers’, produced by Apples and Snakes in 2002, was seen as ground-breaking in its approach to performance poetry as a cross-arts form. Since then, I’ve written short plays for The Royal Court and BBC Radios 3 and 4, worked with The Young Vic and ICT to create participatory community-led shows and held research residencies at Banff, Canada and The Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham University, to develop story-telling platforms for live and on-line audiences with B3 Media and Kings Cultural Institute.
I’m a current Associate Artist with All Change, who lead the field in building long term relationships with communities to make and share outstanding creative work and have been poet in residence at The Barbican, BBC White City, The Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kingston Library, the Natural History Museum and The Metropolitan Police and a guest lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster.
I trained as a workshop facilitator with Apples and Snakes through their Poets In Education scheme and have over twenty years experience as a creative practitioner in primary and secondary schools as well as libraries, hospitals, prisons and other institutions.
I’ve represented contemporary UK literature with the British Council in 23 different countries, from a jazz café in Azerbaijan, to a Bangkok shopping mall, in a Colombian prison to Zimbabwe’s National Library, working with Femrite, a Ugandan activist women’s literature organisation to create a public performance for the National Theatre in Kampala and with Makaan Arts and Culture, to create the first ever student-led cross arts theatre show in Khartoum.
My work is often research-informed and inspired by emerging knowledge about ourselves and the universe.
"Spine-tingling... Witty and narcotic." The Independent
"...witty and whimsical... a quality-guarantee."; “utterly magical’. Evening Standard
"Sensuous and funny" Time Out
"The Queen of British performance poetry… one of our finest cartographers of the human heart." London Metro
"Brilliant, illuminating all manner of euphemisms, dreams, lies and hidden agendas." The Scotsman