That’s What We Said x Leeds Poetry Festival
Leeds
12 Jul 2023
18.45 - 20.00
Left Bank
We are thrilled to announce that we will be hosting a very special That’s What We Said at Leeds Poetry Festival this year!
Join us on Wednesday 12th July 6.45-8pm at Left Bank, Leeds for an evening with special guests Malaika Kegode, Crow Rudd plus a rare performance from our co-director Jo Flynn! A short open mic will also be open to performers who do not identify as cis-men. Sign up here.
Open micers will be chosen at random out of those who sign up. We strongly encourage you to attend the event in case there are any no-shows and you can step in!
Performer
Crow Rudd
Crow Rudd is disabled nonbinary queer internationally published punk poet, multiple slam champion, events producer and workshop facilitator based in York. Creator and host of Sad Poets Doorstep Club, founder of the UK Trans & Nonbinary Poets Network and workshop facilitator for They//Us. Crow has been published by Slice of the Moon Books, Paper & Ink Literary Zine and Warning Lines, has featured at Manchester Punk Festival, Loud & Queer Arts Festival and Leeds LGBT+ Lit Fest, and has headlined Punk in Drublic, Switchblade and Incite!. Their debut collection i am a thing of rough edges is available from Whisky & Beards Publishing.
Performer
Malaika Kegode
Malaika Kegode is an award-winning writer, performer and creative producer based in Bristol. Her work is focused on uplifting and celebrating the overlooked and misunderstood. Beginning her arts career as a performance poet in 2014, Malaika has since developed her practice to encompass theatre, radio and film writing.
Winner of the Kevin Elyot Award (2022) and shortlisted for the Out-Spoken Poetry Award (2019), Malaika has also been included in the BME Power List, celebrating Bristol’s most influential Black & minority ethnic people. She has performed around the UK at a number of celebrated venues, festivals and literary events, and worked with a wide-range of organisations as a writer, teacher and performer.
Her poetry collections Requite (2017) and Thalassic (2020) are published by Burning Eye Books.
Performer
Jo Flynn
After winning the Roy Fisher Prize for poetry, endorsed by the Poet Laureate, Jo Flynn’s debut poetry pamphlet Swallowing Sand was published and she’s since been featured at the National Poetry Library in London for short form poetry, shortlisted for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize at Cambridge University, and published by the likes of Dear Damsels, Mookychick, and The Signal House Edition as well as invited to read internationally.
Jo has developed and teaches a poetry course with Write Like A Grrrl and offers editing and feedback on poetry to individual writers. With an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing and working closely with artists and writers across Manchester with Manchester City of Literature, Jo just hopes to make sense of the world with words. And dogs.
Host
Bridget Hart
Bridget Hart (they/them) is a writer, performer and creative producer based in the South West.
Bridget is the former long term editor of Burning Eye Books, and continues to help performance artists transfer their work to the page as a freelance mentor. They have appeared on panels and hosted live poetry events across many UK festivals including Verve, Leeds, Cheltenham Poetry Festivals, Shambala, Uni Slam and the Poetry Book Fair.
As a performance poet, Bridget has been tearing up DIY punk shows for over a decade, cutting their teeth at feminist punk shows across the country. They have performed at Boomtown, Shambala, Manchester Punk Festival and Edinburgh Fringe. They have published two collections of poetry, Better Watch Your Mouth, and the latest Chewing Gum – a queer reimagining of Grease published by Small Press (Tangent Books).
Bridget is the co-ordinator of For Books’ Sake’s non-binary writer’s group They//Us.
