Fran Lock has won the inaugural £500 Out-Spoken poetry prize, it was announced on Tuesday night. Judges Niall O'Sullivan, Ira Lightman, Sabrina Mahfouz, Jacob Sam-La Rose and Helen Mort picked Lock as overall winner after also naming her first in the political poetry category. Winners of the innovation, poetry in film, and performance categories were Sophie McKeand, Roseanne Watt, and Laurie Ogden.  

Out-Spoken, a regular poetry night at The Forge in Camden - it also publishes poetry and runs workshops - had more than 300 entries for the four categories, and said they were overwhelmed by the quantity as well as the quality. Both Laurie Ogden and Theresa Lola featured on two of the four shortlists. All shortlisted entries were heard and seen on the night, which was also graced by fine performances from three featured poets – Dean Atta, Salena Godden, and Brian Patten.

Dean Atta’s three poems all had ‘How To …’ in the title. ‘How To Be a Poet’ advised “redraft, redraft, redraft, relax” and that “a poem is never finished, only abandoned”. He also observed that “there are so many ways to be a poet. You never have to be yourself.” ‘How To Be a Vegan’ – (“I’m not a snob about my veganism”) – suggested forgetting “how much you used to like chicken … eventually learn to live without cheese”. It’s never easy: “This is Africa , they said, we don’t have vegans here.” The poignant ‘How To Say Goodbye’ says starkly: “Accept there is no right thing to say at a time like this” and ends: “There is no wrong way to die.” Powerful stuff.

There was power and poignancy from Salena Godden, too. A poem about cycles of violence and revenge, ‘November Paris Blue’, concluded: “I feel the sorrow of the ghosts of all the lost”, as her voice rose in anger, and became breathless with emotion. At the other end of the spectrum, the hilarious ‘My Tits Are More Feminist Than Your Tits’ began as a satire on the cacophony of views and voices on Twitter, and developed into surreal areas, demanding audience participation.

Brian Patten was introduced by host John Berkavitch asking the audience: “Do you have these days when you get to meet a hero?” Patten, whose The Mersey Sound collection of poetry with fellow Liverpool poets Roger McGough and Adrian Henri became a huge poetry bestseller, is no slouch as a performance poet, amusing the audience with his Sufi vignettes, and his warning about stray hairs on the pillow. He introduced his poem, ‘The Minister For Exams’, by saying that “we were marched to Quarry Bank school in Liverpool to sit our 11-plus … a very good school full of working-class heroes”. [John Lennon went there]. This poem, with its two final questions: “How large is a child’s imagination?” and “How shallow is the soul of the Minister for Exams?” is more relevant, and should make people more angry, with every passing year.  

One of the competition winners, Sophie McKeand, had won her a category with a moving and startling poem about refugees in peril on the Mediterranean. Out-Spoken’s Anthony Anaxagorou contributed a incantatory poem of epic length about immigration, ‘The Journey Back Home’, a theme that he introduced by calling on stage two young volunteer workers to speak of the plight of the “kind, inspirational, heroic people” in the camp at Calais, and how it was getting colder and harder for them all.

Moments like this demonstrate where Out-Spoken’s heart is, and that you can showcase poetry in a smart, cool, jazzy space such as The Forge without losing your soul. Poetry doesn’t always have to be in the back rooms of pubs. Nothing wrong with such locations, of course – but occasionally poetry can put on a bit of style, and parade itself. And not look out of place at all.

The eveningd was complemented by music from the Shama Rahman Quintet, and the evocative piano playing of Out-Spoken’s Karim Kamar.

Greg Freeman

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