Bradley Taylor - Performance Poetry Workshop

Join award-winning Birmingham poet, Bradley Taylor for an in depth, active workshop session that will focus on stage and performance techniques to perform poetry to an audience. You will also work on your own unique style as a performer through bringing and sharing a piece of your work to be developed and perfected for the stage within the workshop session.

‘We will be covering all bases of performance poetry in this session – from the different ways we can walk onto a stage to the ways we leave an audience desperate for more. We will be looking at some of the great performance poets such as Benjamin Zephaniah, Kae Tempest and John Cooper Clarke, amongst others, to figure out what makes them so commanding as performers and how we can tailor that to our very own performance styles. We will study first – looking at specific actions and tricks we can make as a performer, and then we will apply what we have learnt to our own work. We will be performing and sharing with each other a piece of our own work so that we can walk away with not only a better understanding of performance poetry and how we can strengthen our own performances but also with a piece of work that has been lovingly picked apart and discussed by myself and the others in the workshop to uncover the even better piece of performance poetry that lies within it. I can’t wait.’ – Bradley

Bradley Taylor is a performance poet born and based in Birmingham. This year he won the Roundhouse Poetry Slam 2024, the night of which was the biggest poetry slam in history. Bradley has also performed at the Hay Festival, The Verve Poetry Festival and The Heath Bookshop Literature & Music Festival. He has been commissioned to write and perform poems at The Inspirational Youth Awards and the Birmingham Festival, and has appeared on BBC news showcasing his work.

Bradley also hosts Overcoat Poetry, a monthly spoken word night based at Fletchers Bar in Kings Heath, which spotlights local and emerging talent. He has previously run workshops as part of current Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s ‘Blossoms’ project with the National Trust, and next year he will release a collection of performance poems with Verve Poetry Press.