Introduction to Isabelle

Transcript of audio

Alice: Hello, and welcome to everyone joining us.  It’s the greatest pleasure to introduce Isabelle Baafi, who will be leading this Voicing Our Silences workshop and performance. They’re aimed at helping people work with new creative spaces.   To my mind, Isabelle is one of the most exciting and essential new poets writing out of London.  Making poems that encompass Africa and the Caribbean, but also speak to and with the voices of the contemporary urban environment, especially those of girls and women, her creative practice is as radical as it is courageous and necessary.  

Isabelle’s poems have a freshness, and power, on the page, and in performance.  They ask you to see with different eyes – and question what you thought you saw before.  Whether exploring what it means to bring a child into the world, or maybe lose it along the way, interrogating how we nurture each other,  or documenting the vulnerabilities and hungers of adolescence, her poems consistently expand the possible with a generosity that is enthralling. 

Isabelle Baafi has just published her debut pamphlet Ripe with Ignition, from which she’ll be reading tonight, and discussing some of the poems with me. She previously won the 2019 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize, and was shortlisted for both the 2020 Bridport Prize, and the 2019 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition.  She’s published everywhere from The Caribbean Writer to The Poetry Review and is also on the Magma board. 

Our format will be that Isabelle will read from her work, after which she and I will discuss the poems, before she leads an extended writing exercise. I’ll then give you a few of my poems, which I hope can speak to what we’ve been thinking about together. Isabelle will then share more poems, which we’ll talk about, before she leads our final writing exercise. Over to Isabelle. 

The video of our reading is below, and you can turn the captions on through YouTube.

There is also an audio link here, if you would prefer to listen as a podcast. The following audio and video contain references to sexual assault, grooming and sexual abuse in childhood. The references are contextualised, and the viewer's/ listener's safety is kept in mind at all times.

The chat is below the video, so you have the option of reading the exercises if you are d/Deaf.

Finally, scroll to the end of the page for Isabelle’s links, and her poem Finding my dad in a can of baked beans.

00:51:20 Maia Elsner: Your words are so visceral, delicious, haunting and profound. Thank you for your words. We chew on silence.

00:56:35 anita anita: Gorgeous reading Isabelle, and thanks everyone for letting me sit in on your group and sorry I have to scoot xx

01:02:15 Emily Fleuriot: sorry the internet cut out - would it be possible to write this into the chat?

01:02:25 Isabelle Baafi: sure

01:02:46 Isabelle Baafi: Make a list of:

01:03:04 Isabelle Baafi: 1) 5 meaningful objects from your childhood

01:03:11 Isabelle Baafi: 2)5 household objects that you couldn’t physically live without (try to make it personal)

01:03:26 Isabelle Baafi: 3 ) 5 objects that scare you, or once scared you

01:03:38 Isabelle Baafi: 4) 5 objects that changed you forever (pan that burned you, sharp edge that scarred you, snow that gave you frostbite, etc)

01:03:47 Isabelle Baafi: 5) 5 objects that you hope you will never see

01:04:00 Emily Fleuriot: thank you! x

01:11:13 Maia Elsner: Thank you so much Isabelle!

01:11:32 Aisha: Thanks so much !

01:11:46 Appiah : powerful exercise - thanks Isabelle xx

01:18:24 Sophia: Astonishing poems Alice. Thank you so much. xx

01:18:34 Maia Elsner: Yay

01:19:22 Tamsin Cottis: Alice, your poems are incredible

01:22:16 Maia Elsner: Wow!

01:23:55 Maia Elsner: Amazing Isabelle

01:23:57 sarah: I’m so sorry I have to leave early. Thank you for a lovely evening. Such a gift to hear your incredible poems, Isabelle and Alice. Thank you <3

01:23:58 Tamsin Hopkins: I feel so privileged to hear this vital poems from Alice and Isabelle tonight. Amazing. Thank you both so much xx

01:24:20 Sophia: Wonderful poems Isabelle xx

01:26:21 Tamsin Cottis: Such a privilege to hear you both read your significant, heartstopping poems .

01:29:54 Joanna Ingham: I need to go now but I wanted to thank you both for your really stunning poems and beautiful readings. Fascinating discussion and lovely writing exercise too. Thank you both so much.

01:33:10 Isabelle Baafi: Write down:

01:33:13 Isabelle Baafi: 1) 5 times when you were silenced, ignored, overpowered, or when you chose to stay silent

01:33:24 Isabelle Baafi: 2) As many 2 letter words as you can think of

01:33:57 Isabelle Baafi: 3) As many as many 3 letter words as you can think of

01:36:23 Isabelle Baafi: Pick a time when you were silenced / silent / ignored / overpowered and pick a word from the list of 2 and 3 letter words that represents how you felt, or how you fought back, or what helped you overcome it. Write a poem about the event with one of those words in every line

01:36:41 Isabelle Baafi: Let me know if you have any questions :)

01:41:42 Maia Elsner: Really useful exercise

01:41:56 Rachel Lewis: my brain and my heart have been expanded this evening. thank you so much both x

01:42:19 Sophia: Great last exercise, thanks. x

01:42:22 Tamsin Cottis: That's been such an inspiring exercise , Isabelle. Thank you

01:42:27 Maia Elsner: Thank you so much Alice, Isabelle. Amazing poems, amazing discussion. Startling and moving.

01:42:38 Chaucer Cameron: wonderful poems and many many congratulations to you both

Finding my dad in a can of baked beans

Isabelle Baafi