Geography is Irrelevant

Lockdown: It has been a bizarre trade-off, eh? Performers are vampires: we feed off audiences, but now, without live crowds, are blessed with access to all-new open mics; all-new audiences, even if only in the two dimensions of Zoom. 

These are strange times. So much is lost, and yet, the things we've gained are precious.

We have assembled poems and prose drawn from attendees to York Spoken Word, Fire & Dust, and Wordspace. The York open mic has enjoyed readers and listeners from Ireland, Isle of Man, all over the so-far still United Kingdom, N America, Australia, The Philippines and Israel. Amina Alyal's open mic Wordspace has welcomed readers from Toronto, Athens, Gaza, the US, and throughout the British Isles. And Raef Boylan's event Fire & Dust, based in Coventry has hosted poets from Ireland, The Netherlands, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, N and S America, India, The Philippines, The Isle of Man, as well as those from across the UK. All reading into smartphones, or squinting into budget webcam/mic assemblies, from bedrooms and kitchens and offices across the globe. Geography truly is, for now, irrelevant. 

All three open mics have had our regulars Zoom in, but for this anthology, we have collected the work of other readers. Out of towners. Those who join ONLY because of Zoom, which we're using only because of Lockdown. Pieces from creatives who would never otherwise have read together due to, normally, an ocean in the way. Or due to being at the wrong end of Britain. Or because physical barriers to access are now irrelevant too. 

Many pieces are about the shock of Lockdown, but many aren't. Another plague now receiving (at last) some attention is the disease of bigotry and exclusion that infests America, and the UK too. The Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the US in May 2020, after the public murder of George Floyd and negligent police killing of Breonna Taylor, have begun necessary conversations that may yet affect the 2020 American Presidential election.  

So, assembled here are pieces that have been shared out at open mics we would never have otherwise attended. We honor the new, global, international connections that otherwise would not have been made. A bizarre, bittersweet gift of Rona.

These poems and prose pieces demonstrate truly that geography can be irrelevant.

Amina Alyal has not always lived in this century. She finds it much the same as the last one she was in, however, only with better technology and more fantasy films. Contrary to popular belief she doesn't think metaculturism was a mistake, and is herself a metaculturist, a multicolourist, and a metafictionalist. One of her favourite books is Ovid's Metamorphoses, although she is also well versed in Middle Earth and thinks Peter Jackson is a total dreamboat. Metaphorically speaking. But she understands that you can't live entirely in fantasy worlds, and so her writing is both fanciful and rooted in solid ground. Amina has spent much of her life reading poetry and growing plants. She doesn't have as many hours as she wants for either, but still finds both sustaining. She likes to watch roses growing, jasmine climbing, irises popping out their sharp tips of colour from the darkness of leaves and earth. Then maybe it's time for a dose of Alice Oswald, Wallace Stevens or Walter de la Mare. Taken with green tea and a big slice of imagination, she says, they really can't be topped. She would very much like to do this inside one of those landscapes you can see in a Persian miniature, all herbs and hills and trees and turf, perhaps the one where Rustum dozes on a stripy mat, while his horse heroically wrestles with a lion in the margins. Her inspirations are often from art, or archaeology, from all round the world and all over the centuries. Other than this mansions, moors, music and memories all go into the mix. So long as it can be caught and turned about in the alembic of words, anything, she believes, can graft onto anything and grow new forms. Surprising though it may seem, she is in fact a doctor, but her surgical skills are really terrible and she doesn't inspire confidence if asked to diagnose a disease. She isn't actually allowed to write prescriptions. Temperamentally a night owl, by day she frequents the groves of academe, where literature and creative writing are her specialties. She works with students and colleagues mainly on poetry, drama, performance and rhetoric, and she sowed the seed that blossomed into Wordspace - the open mic, imprint and radio station attached to Leeds Trinity University. Her public workshops are sought after, and she doesn't half put a lovely gloss on Rumi, Petrarch, and the Metaphysical Poets. Amina has published widely, in academic publications and in journals and anthologies including Dream Catcher, Envoi, Iota, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual and Heavenly Bodies (Beautiful Dragons Press, 2014). She spent about three years recently working on tanka poems with Oz Hardwick, M. Graham, and the taiko drumming group Kaminari UK - a venture that became a series of shows, a book called Close as Second Skins (Indigo Dreams Press, 2015; shortlisted for the 2015 Saboteur Award for best collaborative work) and a CD called On an Eastern Breeze (Catchment Recordings, 2014). The Ordinariness of Parrots is her first collection.

Rose Drew is a poet and anthropologist, at home in a lab, a classroom, or a stage. Rose is a public speaker, editor and book publisher, events manager, and has co-hosted the York Spoken Word Poetry & Prose open mic since January 2006. Rose and her partner Alan are founding members of York Literature Festival and Ryedale Book Festival: during the 2015 Ryedale festival, Rose was delighted to interview Stephen Kelman about Man on Fire. She's recently chatted with Fiona Mozley and Andrew Michael Hurley and had so much fun! Rose brings her performer's spark to events, and to sales meetings, moving along events and getting books into hands. Also, since Rose is an immigrant, is partly disabled and has an adult autistic child, she can understand some of the issues associated with disability, making a fresh start, and being heard. As a poet, Rose has supported Buddy Wakefield, Rob Auton, Kate Fox and other luminaries, and performed at York Literature Festival, Ryedale Book Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Ilkley Fringe among others. Rose is a not-so-young woman who writes about sex, death, skeletons, politics, parenthood, and can be funny but not hahaha funny. She's won a few slams.