Juice Festival has been a friend of ours for a while now; they’ve had enormous success promoting spoken word to young audiences, and we’ve partnered with them before on both The Rememberers and Kenny Baraka projects. When we heard about their concept for a roving poet at this years festival, we were thrilled to offer our help. It was clear from the start that whoever was selected for the role would be a part of something truly unique and transformative, and we were proud to be a part of that.
It was fantastic to learn that Leicester-based poet Jess Green had been offered the role. Jess has been a real pillar of the spoken word community in the midlands and it was great to see her getting the kind of opportunities that were commensurate with her talents. In her application, she wrote: “I have been told that I have an ability to make the small, insignificant, even mundane aspects of everyday life interesting and I believe that that is the art of good story telling”
Jess was invited up to Juice Festival in late October last year to take in as much as she could of the festival and its city, and across the two weekends she was confronted with a raft of creative and cultural activities. When asked about the significance of festivals like Juice, she said “With youth unemployment ever rising and funding being sapped from schools, libraries and youth projects, dis-empowered young people risk becoming the lost generation. Festivals like Juice have never been so important; to make sure that the voices of young people are celebrated, not forgotten. Poetry shouldn’t be presented as something that’s difficult and that can only be understood if you’ve got the brains to pick out the metaphors. I believe that it is important that young people see poets stand up and say ‘this isn’t difficult, it might actually be sort of fun.”
Jess was tasked with distilling her experiences during the festival into a single poem, which she completed in November.
To find out more about Jess’s involvement with Juice, check our their blog post.
Also, you should follow Jess on Twitter: @greenellenjess
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The Rememberers opened last night at The Old Vic Tunnels – and an integral part of the show are the young writers who comprise The Found. In the story, The Found are secret protectors of The Rememberers, guarding them from the sinister NorCon corporation. Before Kenny Baraka begins the show proper, the audience get to tour the Tunnels and hear from these young poets, who have written pieces based in the dystopian world of the show. Have a listen to some below!
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