Joelle Taylor is a professional spoken word artist, published poet and playwright, as well as the founder and Artistic Director of SLAMbassadors UK, the national youth slam championships administered by the Poetry Society.
She's performed nationally and internationally for the British Council, touring both Zimbabwe and Botswana, and has performed at a diverse range of high profile venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Ronnie Scott’s, Buckingham Palace, the 02 arena, Glastonbury Festival, the 100 Club and Trafalgar Square amongst many others.
Joelle also hosts National Poetry Day Live at the Royal Festival Hall each year and have worked alongside poets like Benjamin Zephaniah, Hollie McNish, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy.
A film of her performing with the SLAMbassadors has been recorded by NATE and sent along with teachers notes to every secondary school in the UK by National Association of Teachers of English.
She is a free-verse poet but works across all forms, including rap and beatbox. As well as this she is the curator of MotherFoucault, a spoken word cabaret show held at various venues around London including Whitechapel Art Gallery (Time Out Critic’s Choice). She has led a course and also featured as a guest poet at the Arvon Foundation. She is anthologised widely and has also appeared on numerous television and radio programmes.
She toured the UK over the summer, and hosted the Glastonbury Festival Slam as well as the Larmer Tree Festival among others. She is Poet in Residence at Kingsmead School in Hackney.
Other work includes working in prisons and judging the Pentonville Slam each year, as well as running spoken word courses in Holloway Prison.
She was also London Lines poet for Walthamstow earlier this year and had my poems printed on thousands of apple wrappers.
Joelle has two collections of poetry and one newly finished novel:
- Ska Tissue on Mother Foucault Press
- The Woman Who was Not There due to be published by Burning Eye Books in 2014
- (W)horror Stories, the novel |
