Katie Ailes On The Good That Poetry Can Do
A conversation about the spoken word poetry scene in Scotland, authenticity and the Life in the UK test.
Dear reader,
My chat today is with Katie Ailes, a poet, researcher, and educator focusing on spoken word poetry. She is Education and Access Director for I Am Loud CIC and has co-devised and performed Loud Poets shows across the UK. They do workshops around the country and you can actually join a monthly writing club as part of their Patreon.
After interviewing George The Poet, you can tell I’m in my poetry bag right now. One of the things I loved about chatting with Katie is that she was super keen to share the work of other poets - so there’s a solid list of recommendations below if you want to follow up.
Finally, a small shout out of my own, all-around good guy Henry Bell has a new book out! I cannot recommend it enough.
Much Love,
Sam
I want to start by asking about the time you were the Glastonbury Poet in Residence - I didn’t even know that was a thing! What was that experience like?
The poetry residency programme has been going for years… And it's interesting because they don’t have a musician in residence… I don’t think. I was commissioned to write two poems before the festival and then one poem after. And then during the festival, you write one or two poems a day, documenting the festival. It's a wild experience, scribbling on my notes app and trying to find places with WiFi to upload things to the editor. It was genuinely nuts. On the last day of the festival, I had a twenty-five minute live set, which was all the poems that I had written through that journey. It ended up being one of the best gigs of my life.
You must get some questions about what spoken word poetry is… What do you say and with what caveats?
When we run workshops we often ask people what they think spoken word is as the first step. And we really emphasise that it is one of the hardest art forms to define on a superficial level, because the term spoken word is a nightmare. We are doing spoken word right now. The baseline definition that I tend to give is that it is poetry that is composed with the intent to be performed. As you are creating the work, there is an inbuilt awareness of how you will be sharing that with an audience using your body. Now there are all sorts of caveats… that [performance] might be through a digital platform. It might be a film poem… I know I have poems that I didn't write with the intent to perform, but then actually later revisited them and was like, oh, this actually works in live performance. We tend to encourage a view of it as having three components - the words, the body and the space.
“…it is an incredibly difficult landscape for cultural organisations across Scotland […] spoken word especially tends to really fall through the cracks.”
On the topic of definitions, can you give me a summary of what your PhD research was about?
It is about the ways in which poets perform and audiences perceive authenticity within the genre of spoken word poetry.
In your thesis you write that ‘having the language and critical framework to perceive the intricate composition and performative craft of this genre need not detract the magic of experiencing it.’ I wondered if working on this thesis affected the way you enjoy spoken word. Do you start seeing the scaffolding too much?
Yes to both questions. Certainly when in the final stages of the PhD and like the year after, I found it very hard to unplug that academic mindset. I would be watching poems from the perspective of analysis and awareness of all of these tools. And I think even more than as an audience member, it really got in my head as a poet, because anytime I was trying to write, I was like, am I being me?
The work I AM LOUD does is really impressive. You and the other folk behind it are so prolific… Where does the energy for that come from? What’s the fuel?
People from marginalised backgrounds, or people who've experienced trauma or discrimination, flock to spoken word because it is such an accessible art form, but one with such an incredible history of being welcoming and a site for activism. I think a lot of what motivates me and Loud Poets more broadly, is an awareness of the good that it can do, and also just a love for the art form. Poetry is great, it can be so many things. But we are also driven by an awareness that it is one of the most underserved, under-supported and struggling art forms in the UK and especially in Scotland. I was very lucky because when I came in, when I settled here in 2014, the scene was in a boom period and there were loads of opportunities. The pandemic wiped a lot of those out. People burning out from years and years of unpaid labour. And so currently it is an incredibly difficult landscape for cultural organisations across Scotland, it's not limited to spoken word, but spoken word especially tends to really fall through the cracks.
You recently got indefinite leave to remain in the UK?
I got indefinite leave to remain.
So, I went through this whole process too. Have you done your Life in the UK test already?
Oh, yeah.
Ok, let's compare questions. I got a combo of two questions that I always talk about. The first one was ‘when were women in the UK over the age of 30 allowed to own property?’ And then the second was, ‘Is Santa Claus a jealous man, an angry man, or a jolly man?’ And you had to pick the right one!
Are you shitting me? That is insane!
Isn't that crazy?
So I got ‘what sport was Lewis Hamilton competing in?’ and I was like, how is this relevant?
How does knowing that make you British?
Marjorie Lotfi has an amazing poem in a pamphlet with Hannah Lavery [that is relevant to this]. I highly recommend reading it.
How does change happen?
Slowly… painfully… I've been thinking a lot this year about transphobia and about just the drastic sea change that we've seen and the reversals in so many things. How in many ways society has gone entirely backwards. The levels of harassment and intolerance… What we are seeing today we have not seen in a long time. And I've been thinking about how very often what it takes is for people to put themselves in the firing line to try to protect a movement and that should not be how change happens, but very often is. That is why it’s so important for people to step in front of a community that is experiencing hate and say, this is not okay and not in my name.
If I died today and left this newsletter to you in my inheritance, who would you interview next?
I feel like I got to give a shout out to some of the people in the spoken word scene. Someone who I think would be great to talk to who very happily is getting her flowers right now is Imogen Sterling, who has been on an absolute tear through the Scottish scene. Fantastic spoken word artist, fantastic theatre-maker and someone who really cares about organising events and innovating within the scene. Talking about unsung heroes in the Scottish scene, the people who organise local open mic nights and local events across Scotland, they’re usually doing this unpaid, just for the love of the thing. There are people who've been organising gigs for 10 years. They haven't seen a penny of it. People like Orla Shortall, up in Aberdeen. People like Laura Fyfe in Sterling. Lorna Callery-Sithole in Glasgow… Ross McFarlane and Ross Wilcock in Glasgow…
I lived in Dundee for a few years and one of those people…
Gavin Cameron!
Gavin Cameron!
He’s done so much work for the scene. Ok, I’m changing my answer to just Gavin Cameron.
He’s the best. Finally, what’s the last great thing you’ve seen?
Obviously, working for Loud Poets, I see a lot of poetry, and we have so many amazing poets on our stages, and I usually don't like singling anyone out. But last month we finally were able to get Yomi Ṣode up at the Storytelling Centre. It was an absolute masterclass in spoken word craft. It was one of the most fantastic sets I have seen a poet do and it was the most skilful, confident, and comfortable I think I have ever seen a poetry performer be with their audience.