Out-Spoken: March

Out-Spoken is the Southbank Centre’s resident poetry and live music night, bringing the hottest UK and international poets to perform alongside world-class musicians every month.

Each monthly gig is hosted by TS Eliot- and Polari Prize-winning poet Taylor, with Bromfield spinning the best in reggae, soul and R&B throughout the evening.

This month’s poets are Nikki Giovanni, Mary Jean Chan and Hannah Lavery with music from Kadie Aquarius.

Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has dazzled and inspired readers for more than sixty years. When she first emerged from the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became one of the most celebrated and controversial poets of the era. Giovanni’s poetry speaks from and to the Black experience, with Black love, Black struggle and Black joy at its centre.

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for multiple prizes, including the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear, Chan’s second book, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Chan is currently the 2023 –2024 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Hannah Lavery is a leading Scottish poet, playwright and performer. Appointed as Edinburgh Makar (city poet) in 2021, her pamphlet Blood Salt Spring was shortlisted for the 2022 Saltire prize. She is an associate artist with the National Theatre of Scotland and one of the winners of the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award 2022. She was a recipient of the Adopt a Playwright Award 2020 and the New Playwright’s Award from Playwriting Studio Scotland 2019.

Kadie Aquarius, pronounced ‘K-Dee Aquarius’, is an artist and female producer residing in London. Specialising in the innovative realm of new alt soul, she combines soundscape, synths and gritty basslines with live instrumentation to craft immersive sonic experiences.

With a wealth of writing expertise and a history of musical partnerships, her latest endeavour marks a compelling evolution in the landscape of soul music, offering a fresh perspective and invigorating energy to the genre.