"We laugh bent double, tears in our eyes, though the laughing don’t laugh out the sadness. We laugh until our shoulders pulse to breathless sobs. Taste the salt from our eyes and sweet from our nostrils. Shake off the shame flaked like dead skin around us. Sweep what the wind is too weak to carry. Keep a small mound for the corner shrine, to wonder on how that dust was first a fist, a heavy silence, rejection and fight." Listen to Writer, Poet and Musician Brother Portrait's piece 'Hold Me Through These Dreams', commissioned by Free Word for How To Be Kind. @freewordcentre freeword.org

Free Word

Hold Me Through These Dreams

Enjoy this podcast with Creative Strategist Suzanne Alleyne and CEO & Artistic Director of Eclipse Theatre, Amanda Huxtable, exploring how preconceptions of how ‘success’ and ‘power’ affect our mindsets. This conversation draws on neurology to begin to explore what is happening in our brains when we acquire or lose power and what this might mean for our own power and agency. Part of Free Word's Finding Power In Isolation season. freeword.org @freewordcentre

The Neurology Of Power

A poem by Talia Randall. Household Father’s beard is a swarm of bees. Brother can’t remember which teenage mutant turtle is which. Sister builds an igloo out of choc-ices. Mother pays for everything. The stray cat visits and eats tuna off the posh china. Father calls the cat Jeremy. Father sees himself in Jeremy. Sister sees herself in brother. Brother sees himself in the TV. Mother realises she left herself in the old country. On the night they get cable they invite the neighbours round for a séance. They rent the house from a giant who sometimes thinks about eating them and sometimes forgets they exist. One day they buy it (with money, they had run out of beans). For breakfast they eat lard and avocado sandwiches And Jeremy does the weekly bills, “too much on toilet-paper” he says.

Household

The UK is facing a housing crisis unlike anything seen in recent history. Priced out of their homes and unable to secure permanent housing, Generation Rent are unable to put down roots in their communities. Change is long overdue. Listen back to an incendiary night of poetry and reflection from Spread the Word’s Young People’s Laureate Theresa Lola, poets Amaal Said and Seraphima Kennedy and illustrator Olivia Twist.

With Love (And Rage), Generation Rent

Immerse yourself in this digital sound installation as poet Amina Jama takes you through a 1990s migrant Somali living room paying homage to the rich Somali culture, Black Britishness, migration, and the creativity that arises from displacement. Grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable… #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

Somalinimo (till I dhimo)

Listen back to the launch of Somali-British writer Amina Jama’s debut poetry collection, exploring the legacy of poetry and art, and the ways we are influenced by the voices that have come before us. Edited by Jacob Sam-La Rose and published by Flipped Eye, A Warning To The House That Holds Me responds to the work of Safia Ehillio, Hanif Abdurraqib, Ocean Vuong, Caroline Bird and most prominently Frida Kahlo. Amina Jama draws on experiences of home, autonomy and passage, writing in conversation with Kahlo and exploring the varied and unusual spaces some call home. This podcast features readings from some of the freshest, most exciting voices in the UK poetry and performance scene including poets Ola Elhassan, Amaal Said, Sumia Jaama, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Hibaq Osman and musician Dulaeh Oke. Hosted by poet and visual artist Ruth Sutoyé. #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

A Warning (To The House That Holds Me)

How do explorations of our personal histories inform our understanding of home? Rathbones Folio Prize and Ted Hughes Award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus, multi-award-winning poet and memoirist Hannah Lowe and acclaimed writer, historian and producer Colin Grant have all written compellingly about their fathers’ experiences emigrating from Jamaica to the UK. How have they interpreted these shared, yet distinct, family stories in their work, and how has it shaped them as writers? Listen back as celebrated writers Raymond Antrobus, Hannah Lowe and Colin Grant explore stories of Caribbean fatherhood. In collaboration with Arvon. The event is introduced by Andrew Kidd, Arvon’s Chief Executive and Artistic Director. #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre

My Father's House

Our country is in the middle of a housing emergency. Failure to provide enough social homes is the root cause of the housing emergency. Yet the number of social homes being built is at its lowest for 70 years with over one million households on the waiting list. We need to fix the broken housing system. Listen back to the conversation with housing and homelessness charity Shelter featuring the first dedicated LGBTQI+ crisis and community centre The Outside Project, author Luan Goldie, poet and campaigner Kojo Apeagyei and Liza Begum. #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

The Future Of Social Housing

"I know it’s all a matter of rebuilding one’s life. In many ways it’s a matter of surviving and living under another sun, but how was I to do that?" Listen back to this conversation with writers Long Litt Woon and Zakiya Mckenzie, exploring the power of nature as a source of healing and belonging. #WritingOurWayHome Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

The Way Through The Woods

Diaspora is Whitechapel, Bradford, Southall, Wilmslow Road and Alum Rock; diaspora is the memes we share, the turns of phrases we use, the languages we speak and don’t speak. Listen back to an excerpt taken from Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan's brand new performance piece on a world beyond origins. At a time when nation states throughout the West are struggling to make sense of their diasporic populations and defining them as ‘other’, where the rhetoric of ‘go back to where you came from’ echoes across the globe, this explosive new performance piece from poet Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khoon, with live percussion from Sarathy Korwar, reminds us that diasporas are irrevocably rooted in – and inseparable from – the places that we live in. @freewordcentre #WritingOurWayHome freeword.org

The End of Diaspora

With press freedom under greater threat around the world now than ever before, an increasing number of journalists are finding themselves exiled from their home countries, forced to flee for their safety to avoid violent attacks, torture, or lengthy imprisonment in retaliation for their reporting. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) UK Bureau Director Rebecca Vincent,Turkish journalist and activist Ege Dündar, editor of Al-Hudood Isam Uraiqat and British-Iranian journalist Rana Rahimpour join to share exile experiences as a journalist. @freewordcentre #WritingOurWayHome freeword.org

Exile: The Cost of Reporting the Truth

What power does literature have in hostile environments? Can it do more than describe homes and spaces of belonging –– can it create them? In a society overwhelmed with questions of who has the right to be heard and who doesn’t, can literature strengthen threatened communities? Black British writers Roger Robinson, Winsome Pinnock, Inua Ellams, Bridget Minamore reflect on writing and resistance with Wasafiri. @freewordcentre #WritingOurWayHome freeword.org

Writing Our Way Home

How do you self care and develop your career at the same time? Are you constantly feeling like your self-care has to take second place to your career?  As individuals how do we self care whilst maintaining both our career development and professional persona? As an organisation how do you support employee self-care and enhance your business? This podcast addresses a question that has become increasingly difficult in the current economic, social and political climate. Featuring: Arts Council England Changemaker Suzanne Alleyne; Tourettes Hero Jess Thom; Paraorchestra Jonathan Harper; HR Professional and counsellor Lisa Bent; arts producer, consultant and coach Elizabeth Lynch; and psychotherapist and counsellor Dawn Estefan. Supported by Free Word, Arts Council England, Apples and Snakes, The Watch Men Agency, d237 and Arts Professional.

Self Care versus Career Development

Bald Black Girl(s) is a multi-disciplinary project created by poet, producer and visual artist Ruth Sutoyé, which centres the narratives of black women who choose to shave their heads, and explores perceptions of masculinity, femininity and androgyny alongside sexuality, gender identity and barbershop dynamics. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook @freewordcentre freeword.org

Bald Black Girl(s)

Free Word is the UK's only centre for literature, literacy and free expression. A crucible of creativity for literary culture, politics and ideas, this podcast series collects some of the highlights from our work and that of our six resident organisations. Learn more at www.freewordcentre.com

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