Continuing our series of features on the Southbank Centre events and initiatives, we caught up with New Poets Collective’s Hazel Davis. Haze Davis is a multidisciplinary artist and writer interested in the relationship between the arts and revolutionary social movements. The artist has previously run a series of open mics for political poetry out of the Freedom Bookshop building, as well as a radio show on Platform B Radio, Poets’ Corner, showcasing the meeting points of poetry and music.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with Occhi Magazine. For those who may not be familiar with your background, what initially sparked your interest in pursuing a career in the arts, and in particular poetry?
Thanks for having me! I was interacting with a lot of hip hop in my teens, and having a lot of fun writing bars that were as dense as possible, sonically speaking. Multisyllabic rhymes are so pleasing. To be honest, and this might sound a bit salty, but it’s the truth – cyphers and SoundCloud rapper bedroom producer scenes are such a sausage fest and I didn’t feel like the invitation to ‘come over and make music’ was as simple for me as it was for the guys around me. I had my guard up against ulterior motives and it was tiring.
I wanted to know that hanging out to make something meant exactly that but I could never quite trust it. So I essentially started doing spoken word because it allowed me to write the same stuff, but in a different scene; and it gave me more freedom to break the meter and change up my flow and my tempo. I like not being confined by a beat and I think that’s why I’m interested in the intersection of poetry and jazz – they’re more mutually interactive than bars and beats. As for pursuing a career, I think everyone who likes creating has a career interest, but most people ignore it because it’s so hard to make it viable. I was just lucky to be encouraged by mentor figures at pivotal points to keep putting eggs in that fragile basket. If a career is viable, I’ll take it, but it’s not the thing that’s most important to me. I ultimately just want to have enough freedom to dedicate my time to grassroots stuff, really. Poetry comes second.
You wrote and performed spoken word on Historic England’s Carrying Us, which formed part of the London Short Film Festival in 2022. This is one of your many achievements as an accomplished artist. Is there a particular event or milestone you’re most proud of?
There’s this funny tension with learning and creating that means I’ve never really stayed proud of anything creatively, because, by the time something is finished, I’m an increment or two better at making it than I was when I made the said thing. Does that make sense? Like, the Overton window of quality is always moving and always leaving the last made thing behind. I don’t even feel ‘not proud’, in a tortured artist way, I’m just comfortable with the way I’m experimenting because I’m young, creatively speaking. I don’t expect myself to make things that feel permanently finished yet. Getting into the Southbank Centre New Poets Collective definitely felt like a huge milestone though.
You previously curated a series of open mics for political poetry out of the Freedom Bookshop building, as well as a radio show on Platform B Radio, Poets’ Corner, showcasing the meeting points of poetry and music. Please tell us more about these projects and your interest in fusing poetry with music.
With the events at Freedom, I was trying to figure out a format that mixed political education with arts and entertainment in a way that maintained an appropriate level of seriousness for the former and enjoyment for the latter. We tried it a few different ways. Workshops, talks, quizzes, discussions, etc. I think we did a condensed version of the Anti-Raids training one time. I just wanted people to come away from the night more equipped to go out into the world and act. It’s sort of like luring people through the door with the carrot of having a good time and slipping some education in while they’re not looking. It was also important to the format that people mingled in the interval. If you’re coming to an event for political poetry at the spot that distributes protest bust cards and hosts the DOPE! You probably have some kind of momentum in your life, or you’re looking for some. Spoken word is galvanizing, education is fortifying, and getting connected with each other both builds power and renews our energy. All of that is really generative. I wanted to maximize all of that in one evening.
Poets’ Corner was basically a format I made so that I could shoehorn anything I wanted into an hour of airtime. It was a 10 pm slot, so I would play hip hop I thought deserved some lyrical praise towards the beginning of the show, and then I’d move through the hour with some more literal poetry + music content, I’d get submissions of people reading their poems to put nearer the end so it could finish on a sleepier tone. I would pick a cause to highlight each time, somewhere you could send a few quid if you had it, I’d shout some stuff out at the end while I was signing off, like the Indian agricultural strikes that were happening at the time, for example. ABS – Always Be Shoehorning.
Poetry and music are a combination that makes me tick because I think it’s just fundamentally tick-making, in everyone: if you can deliver something in a way that’s emotive, and you can accompany that with other sounds that are also just fundamentally emotive, then you’ve maybe created something really powerful. Both forms are so malleable in their content. So I’m interested in combining those two things but really the secret third thing in the combo is the social function. What can be done with that power? Also, what can’t be? What do we need to supplement with? That’s what I was trying to figure through with the events I guess.
Are there any particular emotions or experiences you’re trying to convey through your poems?
I’ve been trying to be funnier in my work because humor is such a large part of my internal landscape and it’d be weird if that wasn’t coming through in my writing. There’s a bit of a tropey tone in spoken word where everything is decry this, condemn that, lament everything. Which is a big part of me too, and no disrespect to those artists, it’s important, but I got fatigued with it after hearing it like night after night, year after year. I want to broaden the emotional spectrum available to me as a writer as much as possible. I’m trying to get weirder with it too. But always, always the end goal is to marry the form with the social function. I’m trying to put less of myself in the poem at the moment, so I’m reading around for stuff that looks outwards, not inward. ‘Bearing witness’ to humanity and its events is the meat of literature. Introspection is only ever a means to that end, we look inward so we can do a better job of being outward-facing. That’s the job.
Having been actively involved in poetry and spoken word initiatives, how have your style and themes evolved over time? To what extent does your personal environment or daily life inspire your poetry?
Endlessly. I only write from what I know. Even if I write from a dream or something fully imagined, it’s a composite, collaged thing. My advice for writer’s block or creative funks is always just go outside and live your life. Be social. Do something novel. Forget the writing and the ideas will come.
Linked to what inspires you, can you share some of your early influencers and how they have left their mark on your career?
Really early on, like 15 to 17, I was listening to a lot of 90s and 00’s US stuff, Black Star, Pharcyde, J5, that kind of thing. That’s really where the enjoyment came from that had me spending hours working on like four lines, or listing words in notebooks just off sound association. Probably my biggest influence is Noname. People who take the time to really figure out how they sound, to really break away from what other people are doing and make something really distinct, I respect that a lot. Quasimoto is huge for that too. I’ve listened to Noname’s telefone more than any other album for sure. I realized recently that this midwest post-hardcore band I used to listen to when I was like 14, La Dispute, was probably my earliest influence, in terms of being quite free with delivery and style, not singing or rapping over music but kinda just speaking, maybe getting a little shouty with it when the moment’s right. I think they were kinda lodged in my subconscious but I didn’t see them as a direct influence, it’s just something I’ve realized retrospectively.
In terms of influences directly on me in my personal life, I owe a lot to Michael Parker who used to run Hammer and Tongue in Brighton. He’s overseen various projects that I was involved with when I was super young and he gave me a lot of encouragement, direction, and experience. Same with Tom Hines (IYKYK – everyone’s surrogate rap dad) and everyone over at AudioActive. Brighton is really alive with opportunities and mentor figures for young people. I basically owe my whole status as a freelance artist to Lighthouse in Brighton, their 16-25s development program really got the ball rolling for me and they continue to support me to this day. And I think I was both politicized and musico-culturally educated at home, so I have to give my stepdad some credit for that; I don’t know if I’d have been so driven from so young or have this sense of inseparability when it comes to art and social issues if it weren’t for the things he exposed me to. Right now I owe basically everything I know about page poetry to Jack Underwood. So it’s sort of stepdad, rapdad, and poetrydad.
There must be a balance between the need for personal expression with the desire to connect with a wide audience, particularly when you feel your poem is finished. What advice would you give to aspiring poets as they find their voice?
Write like yourself. Write the way you speak, write the way you text. Read lots of contemporary poetry. Don’t be precious about editing. If I’m feeling precious about editing something in case the version I’m about to cut from would have been the best version (which it never is), I put a page break in, copy-paste it, and keep the old version below on a secret next page. Always try out advice, even if you feel grumpy and stubborn about it because it’s always good to have a skill tucked away in your toolbox. Remember that if you try the advice, and you don’t like it, and it’s not how you want to work, you can choose to never get that thing out of your toolbox ever again. It’s better to have it and not use it than to have a narrow skillset. Also, get on that stage. If you’re thinking about it but you’re intimidated, know that the only way to get over that is through exposure therapy. Do it, be embarrassed, ride it out, do it again.
How much importance do you place on the sound, rhythm, or musicality of your poems during the writing process, particularly as you’re interested in working with jazz musicians to create music with spoken word? Can you share more about any upcoming works or projects related to this?
I’m privately working out what my voice is when I’m using it musically. When I’m ready to venture out with it you’ll find me at South East London jams. Nu Sessions (Deptford) are really good, and obviously Orii. In the meantime, you should check out Brother Portrait. He toes the line between a natural and a deliberate sound so well. His sound is his own and you can tell he’s listened carefully to everyone who’s come before him to inform it. My first listen to his music was cathartic and exciting because he’s making almost exactly the thing I’ve had in my head for so long.
Where can our readers find more information about you and your work?
I’m doing a pretty good job of being offline these days but I’m most active with the art updates on instagram at @goatsbruh. I’m on Twitter too but that’s mostly for nonsense.
With support from the TS Eliot Foundation, the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective recruits a new cohort of poets every year, helping them hone their voices. For further information on the New Poets Collective, visit the Southbank Centre website.
Images, courtesy of the artist, provided by Southbank Centre
headshot of Hazel Davis. Photo by Cecelia/ Mennel Muthaship at Fiddlers Elbow. Photo by Natalia Bjerke/ Class in the arts panel at Lighthouse Brighton. Photo by Phoebe Wingrove
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