Words Apart at the Royal Society of Arts!

On Monday Words Apart were invited to the Royal Society of Arts Youth Awards for Innovation for winning a 2 and a half thousand pound funding application. It was a great evening with 3 groups being awarded funding too. This year, the RSA received a lot of applicants across London so Words Apart have done incredibly well to get the award for our project. A special thanks to our mentor/poet/musician Arjunan Manuelpillai for leading Words Apart and being an inspiration to all of us.

The evening started with a session of ‘mingling.’ We showcased our poetry with a laptop and different pieces on our table. Everyone was quite new to the concept of networking but includes repeating the same 5 minute speech until it becomes integrated in your verbatim.

We were then presented the award, fellow Words Apart poet Edward and I gave a quick introduction on Words Apart. Edward O’Garro Pridde performed a fantastic poem which blew everyone away about the nature of Youth Centre’s and their importance. Edward also explained the concept of our film project which will screen in Barnet in the near future and will be based on youth identity.

The award was for our project called ‘Twisted Tongues.’ The award given to us was for a film we will be making this summer, it will be a 10 minute drama written in verse incorporated with parkour. It incorporates our youth poetry group – Words Apart and another Youth parkour group. Parkour, also known as Free-running is the art of going from A to B in the most extravagant way. So walking to college would mean doing back-flips, running up walls and jumping off the top of a bus-stop. The parkour group is run by the recent winner of a Sunday Times Film competition, Lish David.

It was an evening which rewarded the efforts of everyone in the group. Words Apart have made great strides this year having performed at the South Bank Centre in the Royal Festival Hall supporting some of Palestine’s best poets. As well as performing at the Finchley Youth Theatre, the Harrow Arts Centre and the Rumi Festival. We were even invited to the Albany Theatre in Deptford to see the incredible theatre production: ‘Krunch.’ We have also increased our on-line presence with our YouTube Channel: WordsApartPoetry and our blog site: www.wordsapart7.blogspot.com ( a website coming soon) 

This summer heralds some exciting projects for Barnet based youth poetry collective ‘Words Apart’ with the film being made as well as the continued weekly Monday night poetry jams. There will also be a monthly live lounge exclusively for young poets to be held in the ‘Rumi Cave’ – A café in Willesden Green in tandem with community based charity Ulfa Aid.

While I was Writing

I don’t know if these words will find

The one’s they were written for

Or that the expression they contain

Will be heard by those they were meant for

Or Even if

The need is greater than the art

I find these times to be of great concern

I sense the breeze is strong for those of duplicity

This is the irony in these tales

And their meanings

Drone bombs fall on my brothers

My sons my daughters my sisters

Blinded by poverty and the air of deprivation

Blinded by machines that show no mercy

Blinded by the men who control their aims

Blind are those who see not this travesty

Foolish am I who thinks we will reach this amnesty

Yet, despite this anger and rage

These lyrics are not bullets

They are not incendiary

Maybe these thoughts are too simple

Their aim a little elementary

Could it be that such emotions

Just don’t reach the parts of us

That will give rise to a force

For change

That will actually deliver

The people of Gaza from their innate disaster

The price of the suffering in Bosnia

And the screams of Ten-year-old Husna in Chechnya

I use to believe

Now I just bleed words

And lyrics for us forgotten misfits

We chase the web for YouTube and a million Tweets

While I was writing this…

Another family’s dreams was just blown to bits 

“While I was Writing” by Cypher 7 A.D

Cypher 7A.D is a Poetry & Spoken Word based enterprise aimed at expressing issues that count, not those that sell..peace.

http://www.cypher7ad.com

Be like a Candle

Be Like a candle…

Light up faces with a smile

And spread warmth when you walk,

Speak purity all the while

And beauty when you talk

He told me be like a Candle,

The flip side of a sandal or

flip flops when it hits the dust

Knowledge merely a particle

as we promote trust

And expect nothing in return,

Each day passes we earn and learn

Don’t count your blessings..

Store them..

Be like a candle,

selfless like an anti-consumerist society,

Shelf-less

Don’t be restless, patience, control your mind

Hasten.

Rather than chasing 360 and get called dizzee

Be like a candle,

Noor in the darkness,

Sense amongst the senseless,

Like the only ethnic in the census

Direction for the headless

We’re Chickens on the coup,

Fear, as we wait for the military coo

Don’t be scared

Throw your shoe at a dictator. Mubarak

Give like a candle gives light,

Live the way your soul deserves to live

Be a freedom writer, free-writer, free runner

Keep your candle alight, don’t survive,

Fight from an unjust night to a blessed dawn

treasure time, the wick will waste away

As the drummer's kick will awake us one day

Dormant to suffering 

like a volcano lacking heat

conceit 

don't let the wax that moulds us

control us,

don't let hope melt

I repeat

we fly, not spiritually like Rumi

merely physically. over countries.

not hearts.

We have the potential to bring warmth to every human enveloped by darkness

Just like a candle.

The potential to bring a smile to those enveloped by pain

Just like a candle

The potential to conquer hearts which are enslaved

Just like a Candle

But eventually

Our light and warmth will turn to smoke and

Ascend to judgement

From tar filled smog to a beautiful incense

All depending on the intent

Before that unexpected, unknown end,

Simply, Be Like a Candle. 

By Mohamed-Zain Dada, poet and writer: www.times-series.co.uk/blogs/mohamed_zain_dada

Twitter: @Zainthepoet

VIDEO COMING SOON! 

Like the snow in Britain, he came too quick

And I was not prepared for the scale of his bits

And no grit could help with this shit

So I’m stuck with his seed, while his out with some chicks

And he’s up in the club, and I’m watching a flick

And I swear, an abortion is looking so good right now

But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from all of this, is that what looks good

Hell, it ain’t

And it leaves you messed up like carpet and paint

You can wash it away, but it’s still shit after

They tell me that the best medicine is laughter.

And so I,

Turn on the TV to try to block it out of my brain

Until I realise it is that same device that got me giving brain

All the things I have seen I cannot retract

I was too caught up in this box to educate myself with the real facts

And I’m looking at nappies, sitting on the shelf, man

I’m not ready to be a mum. I’m just a kid myself, and I’m

Not ready for this responsibility.

Shit, I’m twelve

I can’t even vote, I can’t even smoke, I can’t even drink and of all the

Illegal shit I had to do it just had to be this

The one thing where I’m not just responsible for me, but also this

But this isn’t how I envisioned it

Where’s my husband, my dog, my house and my picket fence?

I guess it’s where my virginity is, gone, torn

It has died, and now this must be born

It’s a vicious cycle, but I drew it

I had a decent life, but I threw it

And all cause all the kids on the block ‘do it’

The lack of love I was given I thought I could find at the end of a man

I wish I knew that no man deserved me, that no man could desert me

Because I could never be alone if God is with me

Now I am focussed on my seeds

That I will raise to be mothers and fathers

Helen Kellers and Che Guevaras

They might not have a dad,

But I will be their Father

Their sole providers

Their soul riders

And I will love them with one condition

That they love each other

And they will never treat another

How their dad treated their Mother.

By Young, Talented Poet Samira Musa based In Islington. WATCH THIS SPACE!

Desperation

When the doors close in you feel trapped, unable to breathe.
The most spacious place in the world, yet your heart is being crushed.
The taste of salt streams down your face insistently, unwittingly, fittingly. Tears!
Tears.
Strange how they can embody happiness yet represent heartache and turmoil. Desperation.

To be free without constraints. Who are you? Who am i? Who are they?
To break free?
To be the causation of shattered expectations and disappointment.

Oh to break free.
Oh to be me.

By Zena B, a new and very skilled poet!