I joined IdeasTap in 2009. A poetry project I was working on with Sabrina Mahfouz called Rhymes Won’t Wait was awarded Innovators funding. It was a big event at the Ministry of Sound combining poetry with charities, including Love Music Hate Racism, Object, and English PEN.
Out of that event came my collective Point Blank Poets, which is made up of Sabrina Mahfouz, Deanna Rodger, Bridget Minamore, Chimene Suleyman, Holly McNish and me. Since then we’ve done some really cool stuff. We won a UK Young Artists International Award in 2011 and performed in Rome for the Biennial festival. In June we’re running an event in the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival. It has 400 seats so we’re excited to be doing poetry on a big stage.
I first started writing poems as a way of putting down my thoughts. I showed a few to friends and they encouraged me to perform them. When I was young I’d been into musical theatre but as a teenager I was more into writing and keeping to myself. Towards the end of school and at uni, it all came together and I started performing my own writing at open mic nights. That’s when I decided it would be my career.
As well as writing and performing, I work with young people, through various organisations and in schools. It adds to your experience as a child or teenager to do an activity where you’re working on your confidence and skills. For many young people, school isn’t a happy place but if they have an outlet, whether it’s on the football pitch or on the stage, it gives them perspective.
My first book, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, was published in March. That was a real milestone for me. I’ve been writing for 10 years and the poetry in the book reflects that time, with poems from when I first started to things I wrote just last year. At the moment I’m also doing a Writer Teacher MA at Goldsmiths. It’s split between the education and creative writing departments. Next year I’ll be in school four days a week as a poet-in-residence.
For the past two-and-a-half years Deanna Rodger and I have been running a night called Come Rhyme with Me in London and Brighton. We wanted to set up a night we’d be excited to go to and it’s become really popular. Loads of poets I met through IdeasTap have come down to perform or to be in the audience. IdeasTap is a great way to network and meet likeminded people because they list their interests.
Poetry collectives are having a real emergence at the moment. Poetry doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavor – it can be about fun and camaraderie. For people who don’t live in a city with lots of people around them physically, IdeasTap is great because it allows you to connect, come up with ideas and share work virtually.
Dean will be performing with Point Blank Poets at 8pm on 1 June at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival. The Rubix Collective, of which Dean is a member, will be performing The Red Album at 7:30pm on 27 June at Chelsea Theatre.
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