To stretch the boundaries of poetry in education and performance, by inspiring participation and giving voice to a diverse range of dynamic spoken word artists
Run by a board of trustees chaired by Kerry Featherstone,[2] Apples and Snakes has been a registered charity since 1986.[7] It currently receives more than £400,000 funding annually, as a national portfolio organisation, from Arts Council England.[8]
History
Apples and Snakes was launched in 1982,[9] with its first poetry performance, at the Adam's Arms pub in Conway Street in central London.[10] It is currently one of the organisations resident at the Free Word Centre.[11]
In 1984, it organised a poetry performance at Glastonbury Festival and at Elephant Fayre, Cornwall. A Miner’s Benefit concert was organised at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, the same year. An Anti-Apartheid benefit was organised at the Southbank in 1985. In 2001, it organised a performance poetry event on London Buses.[12] In 2013, it organised a series of events for young poets on climate change.[13] In conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery and the National Literacy Trust, it organised a series of poetry events designed to complement Picture the Poet, a photographic exhibition that was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery and, in autumn 2014, at Sheffield's Graves Art Gallery.[14][15]
Publications
Apples & Snakes: Raw and Biting Cabaret Poetry published 1984 by Pluto Press, design by Neville Brady. Second edition published 1987.
In 1993, Black Spring Press published Velocity: The Best of Apples & Snakes, an anthology of works by contemporary poets who had performed for Apples and Snakes.[17]
A poetry slam is a competitive art event in which poets perform spoken word poetry before a live audience and a panel of judges. While formats can vary, slams are often loud and lively, with audience participation, cheering and dramatic delivery.
Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience.
Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Alix L. Olson is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist.
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, born in the United Kingdom to parents from Ghana, where he was raised, is a performance poet, writer, publisher and sociocultural commentator. He is one of 39 writers aged under 40 from sub-Saharan Africa who in April 2014 were named as part of the Hay Festival's prestigious Africa39 project. He writes for children under the name K.P. Kojo.
Jessica Care Moore is an American poet. She is the CEO of Moore Black Press, executive producer of BLACK WOMEN ROCK!, and founder of the literacy-driven jess Care moore Foundation. An internationally renowned poet, playwright, performance artist, and producer, she is the recipient of the 2013 Alain Locke Award from the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist. Born in Hastings, UK, of Jamaican-Irish heritage, Godden based in London. Widely anthologised, she has published several books. She has also written for BBC TV and radio and has released four studio albums to date.
The Albany is a multi-purpose arts centre in Deptford, south-east London.
Paul Terence Conneally is a poet, artist and musician based in Loughborough, UK.
Koestler Arts is a charity that helps ex-offenders, secure patients and detainees in the UK to express themselves creatively. It promotes the arts in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration centres and in the community, encouraging creativity and the acquisition of new skills as a means to rehabilitation. The Koestler Awards were founded in 1962 and the organisation became a charitable trust in 1969 following a bequest from the British-Hungarian author, Arthur Koestler.
Poet in the City is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1998 as a project of the Poetry Society; it became an independent charity in 2006.
Shamim Azad is a Bangladeshi-born British bilingual poet, storyteller and writer. She won 2023 Bangla Academy Literary Award in the poetry category.
Roger Robinson is a British writer, musician and performer who lives between England and Trinidad. Best known for A Portable Paradise which won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019.
Nathan Filer is a British writer best known for his debut novel, The Shock of the Fall. This won several major literary awards, including the Costa Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. It was a Sunday Times Bestseller, and has been translated into thirty languages.
National Poetry Day is a British campaign to promote poetry, including public performances. Annually, on the first Thursday of October, events, readings and performances take place across the UK.
Charley Genever is a British poet. She is Peterborough Poet Laureate 2016. Peterborough Poet Laureate is a competition which has been held annually since 1998 to find a local poet who holds the honorary title for one year.
Joelle Taylor RSL is a poet, playwright and author. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
Mab Jones is a poet, writer, and radio presenter based in Wales. She has two poetry collections Poor Queen and take your experience and peel it.
Deborah Emmanuel, known by her performance name ArunDitha, is a slam poet and multi-disciplinary artist from Singapore.
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