Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet was published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024 and was named Guardian Book of the Month. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. She was recently honoured with a DIVA Award for Excellence and was also included in the Independent’s 2024 Pride Power list.
Poetry and Performance
This intensive weekend course will explore a comprehensive range of techniques used to create poetry in performance. We will think about how we write specifically for performance, the art of embodying the poem, the history of spoken word, creating a visual language, how to develop a compelling narrative, forms of spoken poetry, and much more. Led by T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and author Joelle Taylor this course is suitable for both beginners and advanced students.
Tutor
Joelle Taylor
Guest Reader
Hannah Lavery (Digital)
Hannah Lavery is a poet and playwright from Edinburgh. Her debut poetry collection Blood Salt Spring (Polygon, 2022) was nominated for a Saltire Prize in 2022, her second collection Unwritten Woman was published by Polygon in August 2024. Hannah is the former Makar (poet laureate) for the City of Edinburgh, co-host of feminist arts podcast QuineCast and was an Associate Artist at National Theatre Scotland (NTS) her plays for NTS The Drift and Lament for Sheku Bayoh and The Protest have toured extensively. She has written for a wide range of theatre companies, broadcasters and publications including BBC Radio 4 and the Guardian. Hannah lives, breathes and dreams on the beaches and cliffs of Scotland’s East Coast, with her dreaming often taking her back to the streets and closes of Edinburgh.