I love words. I can’t live without them.
My favourite songs are the ones where the words wriggle under my skin and give me goosebumps down my spine.
My favourite writers are the ones who can spin words like candy floss, making something sweet and enticing.
It’s probably no surprise that my love language is words of affirmation. I don’t feel your love so much as hear it, read it.
And I’m a little in love with poetry. Since the days Ms Hopkins taught us lines of Blake and Duffy, with her perfect Oxford accent and her enthusiasm for summer garden parties and her way of making the words leap off the page into life before your very eyes.
I’ve been rediscovering poetry the last year, largely thanks to another blogger, whose “poetry and prayer” email series I signed up for on a whim and which gave me a new language to talk to my creator with.
And then from poetry I discovered spoken word, and dived down deep youtube holes to find more words, spoken with fiery heat and fierce intensity.
And well, Mondays aren’t my most inspired day of the week. And so I thought I might try something new. When I haven’t anything else to say here on a Monday, I’ll post one of my most recent favourites, either spoken word or poetry being performed. Some will be Christian, some will be secular, some will make us uncomfortable, some will make us laugh, some might make us cry.
But hopefully the words of these poets will feed our souls at the start of each week. Sound good? Then let’s begin…
I discovered Harry Baker through the Greenbelt website. It’s a festival I have decided every year I will make it to, and so far haven’t managed to make it back for. I know I would love it.
Harry Baker was the 2010 London Slam Champion, the 2011 UK and European Slam Champion, and the 2012 World Slam Champion. Impressive, no? It’s something about the combination of his London accent, the angle of his head and the fear in his voice and his eyes as he speaks these words that captured me…
I’d love your recommendations and links to videos of poetry and spoken word you think I should see…
