Bradley Taylor ran a fantastic Zephaniah Forest Poetry Workshop at Fletcher’s Bar, King’s Heath, 24th September. He has been working with us to promote the poetry competition for The Zephaniah Forest, as well as submitting his own poetry as well.
As the Overcoat Poetry host, Bradley teamed up with us to run with incredible Benjamin and tree-themed writing sessions to encourage creatives to submit their poetry towards our Trees Please, Poetry Please? competition, as part of The Zephaniah Forest being planted in memory of his legacy this winter in Burbury Park.
He used performances and poems by the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah as prompts for the inspired attendees, who then took their favourite parts and used them to construct their own poetry. These poems submitted to us will see 65 of them paired with one of the 65 trees being planted for the 65 years of Benjamin’s incredible life.
A little help from our friends…
He was joined by his friend and poetic colleague Mads (another incredible Brum-based spoken word poet, and one of Bradley’s closest friends), and in Bradley’s words, “the workshop went really well – [we] had about ten people and they’ve all submitted poems. I think they’re all brilliant too. One is even a riff on the ‘trees please’ poem, but adjust to libraries.” Very creative!
We wanted to say a huge thanks to Bradley for running this fantastic workshop – not only are we planting dedicated trees, but the community are writing dedicated poetry, paving the way for a beautiful legacy in Newtown for Benjamin.
