By Rob Self-Pierson
We all tell stories. It’s how we engage with each other. Come home from work and tell your wife about the window cleaner who didn’t realise the window was open. Head to the pub and chat to Matt about his latest trip to the hospital with his pregnant wife. Stand in a supermarket queue and listen to Joan moan about the price hike in bread.
We all tell stories every day. To feel part of life.
On Friday 13th May, three spoken word artists took the stage at Woolfson & Tay bookshop, café and gallery on Bermondsey Square and shared stories with 26.
And made us feel part of their lives – past, present and future.
Joshua Idehen told us tales of his love (my love downs pills and whisky, spits in public, sits in empty public houses and starts bar fights with itself).
Polar Bear took us back to his adolescence and introduced us to his 17-year-old self and friends (creatures of habit, driving around the same places on a hazy day-by-day basis, praying that the last week of summer takes ages).
And Inua Ellams walked us through South London at night (Camberwell is cliché hell, the bars spill out the steady swell of weed smoke, desperate men and willing women).
The audience smiled and tittered and sighed and cheered and clapped and drifted into reverie and drifted back and connected and remembered and wondered and watched and smiled more. And asked when the next 26 evening of spoken word will be.
I promised we’d do something similar soon. Keep an eye on the website for news on this.