In this episode, poet Sue Brown talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'Truth' by Jean 'Binta' Breeze. Sue joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute and is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane. Sue Brown writes from the heart and the soul. Her words pull from the dialect of her local community, from the long toned melodic speech of preachers and Maya Angelou, from mantras and incantations, from jazz. In her poetry, a lifetime in the making, she is a fighter and a lover, by turns rising up against the oppression that has dominated her peoples’ history, and rising skywards on the warm air of her compassion and her capacity for love. These poems move with a beat that speaks to hearts everywhere. They pulse with life, feeling like they could either be spoken or sung. Feel their rhythm. Feel their profound sensibility. And as Roy McFarlane says in his exuberant introduction to this book – ‘Let Rhythm Chant take a hold of you.’ 'Truth' is taken from Jean Binta Breeze's 'Third World Girl - Selected Poems' , published by Bloodaxe Books. ********* Truth by Jean 'Binta' Breeze some years after when the laughter came again she grew her hair in locks around her head and lived simply without even a bed but she she had stories that woman she had stories to tell and children who listened well and she she hid nothing made no excuses for self just let truth give her voice to the wind and she would sing sometimes sing and ask a little more time for memory to swell their heads the children gathered around her the more they asked the more words she was sent words that crossed all ages served no laws words that questioned all they had been taught so they put her away one day she must be mad the adults say corrupting young minds it's obvious depraved she grew silent then her laughter grew thin then left with the wind but the children grew up and remembered one woman who didn't lie one woman who didn't hide now they count the hypocrites among them From 'Third World Girl, Selected Poems', 2011, Bloodaxe Books. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
