The next Rhythm and Poetry Party, at the Europe House is a nostalgic, no-clutter, no-fuss, night of hip-hop-inspired poems and favourite hip-hop songs. The format is simple: 10 writers share poems that engage any aspect of hip hop culture, and after each poet, the Dj plays two songs of the poet’s choosing. And after that, we dance.
This is event was created specially for commencement of the Eurpean Writers Festival, featuring: Fatima Bouhtouch, Giovanni Esposito, Maria-Sophia Christodoulou, Ibrahim Hirsi, Bella Cox, Bohdan Piasecki, Yanita Georgieva, Michaël Vidon, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo, and Inua Ellams.
Doors 6:00pm / Show 6.30pm
Date / 19 May 2023 / Tix Free
Fatima Bouhtouch / Italy
Fatima Bouhtouch was born in October 1994 and raised up in Italy from Moroccan parents. Her double identity cultivated a passion for cultures and languages which lead to a developed sensitivity towards social and cultural matters. She studied languages and politics in the University of Milan, transferred her studies to the University of Leeds, where she is currently studying Psychology of Education at the university of York. As one of the few third-culture-kids in her school, she started writing to express herself and fight discrimination in educational settings. In 2019, she published “Come Alberi”, her first collection of poems and short stories and started sharing them on social networks. She enjoys performing in different venues and hosting events with Amnesty International and other humanitarian associations to fight racism and aggressions in the education environment through the use of art and poetry.
- Instagram: @fatimouch_
- Facebook: Fatima Bouhtouch
Spoz / Italy
Spoz (real name Giovanni Esposito) is an award winning performance poet, singer / songwriter, film maker, playwright and is the poet-in-residence at Birmingham City FC. Spoz has been seen on BBC Television, has been heard on BBC Radio Four, Radio Five Live, Radio West Midlands, Radio Coventry & Warwickshire, Radio Hereford & Worcs, Capital Gold and on toilets. Spoz has performed at Glastonbury, Shambala, Cheltenham Lit Fest, Larmer Tree, Lakefest, Wychwood and other festivals, as well as in front of his mom. Spoz was Birmingham’s Poet Laureate in 2006 / 7 which was nice. He works a lot with young people in schools, though likes to rough it a little with adults too. Spoz was one of six ‘Bards of Brum’ in the 2022 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony, where he performed some of his poetry to an estimated audience of one billion people.
- twitter: @spozpoet
Maria-Sophia Christodoulou / Cypriot
Maria-Sophia Christodoulou is a British born Cypriot working as an English Secondary School Teacher, Mental Health Advocate and Poet in London. She graduated from Goldsmiths with a BA and MA in English with Creative Writing, and Creative and Life Writing. She has since been published in Nascent by Out-Spoken Press and her debut pamphlet, A Disbelief of Flesh, was released by Out-Spoken Press in November. Her work explores her affection for her Cypriot heritage but also her diasporic and gender identity and her search for acceptance within a feeling and state of ‘in-betweenness’.
- Twitter: @maria_sophia_c
- Instagram: @maria_sophia_c
Ibrahim Hirsi / Holland
Ibrahim Hirsi is a writer, independent researcher, and editorial assistant at Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal. He is currently working on a series of papers exploring the metrics and prosody of southern Somali poetic forms. Ibrahim has been published in The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, PBLJ and in the anthology Before Them, We (Flipped Eye, 2022).
- Instagram: Xirsi_101
- Twitter - TheNabaddoon
Bella Cox / Spain
An internationally acclaimed artist, Bella Cox is a poet, performer, workshop facilitator, event host, and producer who has worked in Kenya, South Africa, and around the UK. She is a three-time Barbican Young Poets alumna, a twice-nominated young people’s laureate for London, and was a member of multiple poetry collectives throughout 2018 while being a founding member of two regular London open mic nights. She has performed her work at events such as TEDx Pretoria, Sköll World Forum, Brighton Literature Festival, Bi Pride UK, and the Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival, and has been commissioned to write for institutions such as the Barbican Centre, HSBC, Time Out London, Bach Remedies and Nationwide Building Society. Her proudly queer and feminist work seeks to embrace differences, empower young people, and explore her own identity. She currently fits writing time around her Marketing Manager role and is working on her debut poetry collection set to be released with Flipped Eye in 2023.
- Instagram: @BellaCoxPoet
- Twitter: @BellaCox19
Bohdan Piasecki / Poland
Bohdan Piasecki is a poet from Poland based in the UK, with a particular interest in orality, multilingualism and storytelling. He has taken his poems from upstairs rooms in local pubs to theatre stages, from underground Tokyo clubs to tramways in Paris, from a bookshop in Beijing to an airfield in Germany, from niche podcasts to the BBC, and more. .An experienced educator and facilitator, Bohdan is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. Outside of academia, he devises and delivers projects which help people of all backgrounds unlock their words using poetry. He is currently writing a book on the intersection of individual memory, history, and the power of unfinished stories.
- Instagram: @wordrain
- Twitter: @beveryquiet
Yanita Georgieva / Bulgaria
Yanita Georgieva is a poet and journalist. She was born in Bulgaria, raised in Lebanon, and is currently living in London. In 2022, she received the Out-Spoken Prize for Page Poetry and was shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize. She is a member of the Southbank New Poets Collective and runs the international poetry group Dreamboat. You can find her work in Poetry Wales, bath magg, The Cardiff Review, Propel Magazine, and elsewhere.
- Twitter: @georgievayani
- Instagram: @yanigorgonzola
Michaël Vidon / France
Michaël Vidon is a French poet, curator and MFL teacher based in the South of England. After graduating from Goldsmiths University of London on the Creative Writing and Education MA and the Spoken Word Education Programme under Jacob Sam-La Rose, he worked in a range of educational and arts organisations as a spoken word educator. His poems can be found in magazines (streetcake, irisi magazine, harana poetry) ; online exhibitions (‘Home’ by Mellom Press) or anthologies (Stephen Spender Prize Suggested Poems List ;Rewilding by Crested Tit Collective). He curated ‘Listen to the music’, a series of videos for the Stephen Spender Prize where poets with another language than English discuss the sound of poems to aid the translation process. Since 2016, he produces the Multilingual Poetry Slam in the South Ken Kids Festival (Institut Français, London) where learners from different settings come together to write multilingual poems. He is interested in the crossovers between language learning, multilingualism and creative writing. He loves navigating the space between meanings.
- twitter: @michaelgvidon
Aea Varfis-van Warmelo / Greece
Aea Varfis-van Warmelo is a Greek-British writer based in London. Her work has appeared in The White Review, Tolka, The National Poetry Library, A Glimpse of, Sand, Spam and others. She was shortlisted for The White Review’s Poet’s Prize, was an inaugural member of the Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective and is currently in the Barbican Young Poets.
- twitter: @AeavanWarmelo,
- instagram: @aeavvw
Inua Ellams / United Kingdom
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen.
- twitter: @inuaellams
- instagram: @inuaellams