After many years prevaricating I have finally created and launched a new website:
joelletaylor.co.uk
Please check it out for regular events listings, biography, gallery and films.
And if you like the site, and wan to create your own contact me for the details of web designer Pete Read.
Hello 2015.
You’ve been quite a year already, quietly watching me travel the South East and South West of the UK, delivering workshops and tap dancing my tongue at gigs. You passed on my number in a late night bar to the gorgeous Ledbury Poetry Festival, and I want you to know that I have seen a lot of Ledbury since. I have been your Poet in Residence for schools, pulling poetry out of teenager’s mouths in leafy lanes and Pupil Refrerral Units. Teaching books to dance.
And now you tell me that there are even more magical things in store for the year. I am writing my first one woman show in 15 years The Space Between Words; I will be creating another hour long piece for composer Stephan Hodel that choreographer Fabien Reimar, a first soloist with English National Ballet, will create pieces that fellow ENB dancers will perform *, and have started a new novel Seven Small Books About Everything.
In between times you are sending me to North Somerset to co-ordinate a spoken word festival in schools and libraries. At the same time you are booking me into secondary schools and colleges across London for SLAMbassadors UK, while still finding a moment to make sure I can tutor and feature for the miraculous Arvon Centre. And the Royal Court masterclass has given me a certain stride useful to city living.
And if that wasn’t enough…? 2015, you have emailed me this:
Last Year I met up with Hollie McNish, Benjmain Zephaniah and Dizraeli in the dank and dirty confines of a Dalston recording studio to film some new cover versions of famous and favourite poems for a project called Page Fright. The idea of the project was to record both the cover version plus one of our signature poems, with each of the films acting as a portal to information about the poets, their influences, the artwork that has inspired them, the music that moves them, the schools of thinking that the poets belong to, and historical details – with links to further reading including thre performed poems. The films are to be produced as ‘apps’ in a sense, with the aim of using performance as a way of enticing young people back into reading. The films will soon be ready for viewing via their own holding website – but here is a preview of my version of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum. I chose this poem not to commemorate or celebrate 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War, but to remind us that no amount of poppies pinned on chests has changed a damned thing. We are still at war. And poppies still look like bullet holes.
My new collection The Woman Who Was Not There on Burning Eye Books will be launched in the smoke haunted half-written Soho environs of Phoenix Artists Club on November 6 at 6.30pm.
Phoenix Artists Club
1 Phoenix Street
London WC2H 9BU
It’s been a long journey. Please come and help me make the final few steps.
A few of my heroes and linguistic revolutionaries will be coming along to show love, and the pre gig will feature the awesome talents of Salena Godden, Raymond Antrobus, Anthony Anaxagorou, Megan Beech, PACE and others.
‘We need poetry like this. Fearless’ Benjamin Zephaniah
‘Joelle Taylor’s a shape shifter,myth maker, linguistic risk taker; poetical activist, surrealist with a raised fist. She knows how to handle a pen’ Patience Agbabi
‘A city gritted heart- beaten tattoo’ John Hegley
Free entry. RSVP joelletaylorbookings@yahoo.com
My new collection The Woman Who Was Not There on Burning Eye Books will be launched in the smoke haunted half-written Soho environs of Phoenix Artists Club on November 6 at 6.30pm.
Phoenix Artists Club
1 Phoenix Street
London WC2H 9BU
It’s been a long journey. Please come and help me make the final few steps.
A few of my heroes and linguistic revolutionaries will be coming along to show love, and the pre gig will feature the awesome talents of Salena Godden, Raymond Antrobus, Anthony Anaxagorou, Megan Beech, PACE and others.
‘We need poetry like this. Fearless’ Benjamin Zephaniah
‘Joelle Taylor’s a shape shifter,myth maker, linguistic risk taker; poetical activist, surrealist with a raised fist. She knows how to handle a pen’ Patience Agbabi
‘A city gritted heart- beaten tattoo’ John Hegley
Free entry. RSVP joelletaylorbookings@yahoo.com
Toward the end of the summer term in 2014 I was invited to Hampton Copurt House in London to record a live TED Talk. I chose as my theme the transformational effect of spoken word and slam poetry on young people, on those who are born of beauty but brought up in the ugly places. It is about speaking the silences.
13 June 2014 Fuse Festival
Gillingham and LV21 Light Ship
16 17 June Whitmore High School
24 25 June Swanlea
26 27 June Morpeth
3 July Wilton’s Music Hall
Graces Alley London E1 11-1pm
4 July Camden Teacher Conference
Windsor
6 July Haslemere Slam, Surrey
10 July Spotlight Centre SLAMbassador showcase
12 July Word Cup slam, Stratford Circus 3-5pm
14 July Buckinghamshire INSET and gig
18 July School of Poetry, Clore Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall 1pm onward
20 July Art 31 session in Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury
27 July Create Festival, Ashford
2 August Lounge on the Farm Festival, Canterbury
22 – 24 August Shambala Festival
Poetry by Heart workshop
Poetry by Heart is a national project that is inspiring young people to learn poetry from a specially selected anthology. They pick 2 poems to learn – one from pre 1914 and one from post 1914 – learn it and perform it at one of a series of events across the UK. It is an excellent way of expanding knowledge and criticism of poetry. I will be working a little on the Poetry by Heart project, leading a workshop alongs the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Roundhouse in Camden – on March 11th 2013. www.poetrybyheart.org
Festival News
I will be performing at a couple of grogeous festivals over the summer. I have just been asked to host the Poetry and Words Tent at Glastonbury Festival, and also to compere at Larmer Tree Festival – a bijou jazz gig deep in th dirty fairy lit forests of Somewhere.
Joelle Taylor began performing as a solo poet after her band lost interest in themselves half way through a song. Never one to be described as observant, Joelle continued speaking over a non-existent backing track – and her spoken word career was born. She was 17 at the time, and by the end of the gig had procured an anarchic manager who quickly set her up to support the Pogues on tour. It was 1986. Since then she has focussed on play writing and developing her performance novel, as well as becoming one of the better known haggard faces of the spoken word scene. She was a member of poetry super group Atomic Lip from 1997 onward (along with Steve Tasane, Patience Agbabi and the Speech Painter), and was proud to be a part of the AL Lit Pop celebrations at the 100 Club later that year – a festival that programmed literally every well known performance poet onto the stage over 3 days.
Joelle has been wildly fortunate to have shared a stage with many of her idols, those who spoke to her through the radio as a child or through books as an adult) such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Lemn Sissay, Jo Shapcott, Jackie Kay, Scroobius Pip, Dizraeli, John Agard, Kat Francois and Holly McNish.
She has performed at every high profile venue in the UK as well as at the back of bars, the back alleys and the back seats of buses. Notable gigs have taken place at Trafalgar Square, the Royal Court, the Royal Festival Hall, the Purcell Rooms, the Poetry Cafe, and the Barbican. She has worked with the Poetry Society, Apples and Snakes, Glastonbury Festival, Larmer Tree Festival, Creative Partnerships, Arvon and the Southbank Centre –as well as numerous small booking agents and venues. For performance enquiries please contact joelletaylorbookings@yahoo.com
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