The Mask of Anarchy

Poetry Parnassus
Southbank Centre 2012

I heard them first before I saw them. They were shouting protest chants and reading from a Shelley poem through a megaphone. Then they came around the corner with their plaquards. Who are they?

They are the Young Producers working with Exiled Writers Ink and they read and recited their poems on subjects as diverse as the London Riots, violence and exploitation and overcoming the odds set against you.

They were joined on stage by Parnassus Poets Shailja Patel and Kosal Khiev  and later music by Aroba Red.

Shaija Patel's poetry was very hard-hitting describing the attitudes of US soldiers born into a world or priviledge and expectation and she highlighted the fact that there are 50,000 US troops in South Korea who act just as they want. She then used poetry to express the views of women with small children caught up in the US prison system.They get sent to jail for possession of a small amount of drugs on the street and Patel contrasted this with the students of Yale who do drugs but somehow manage to escape a jail term, graduate and bag the best jobs. 'Project Pride' is helping these women in the prison system.

Kosal Khiev   http://www.spokenkosal.com/ 

He was born in a Thai refugee camp. As a child he fled the Khmer Rouge with his family and went to the USA. Caught up in gang culture he got arrested at 16 and went to jail for 14 years where he discovered spoken word poetry from a Vietnam War Veteran. When released in 2011 the US deported him to Cambodia and he is now in exile separated from his family.

He recited his poems 'The Time is Now', 'CCC', 'Home Sweet Home', Speak When You are Ready' and 'Moments in Between the Night' which is a phrase that came to him when he was lying on his bunk in the middle of the night in jail. He is changing the way poetry is spoken.  He spoke of youth getting snared in a system that recycles youth offenders and how prison is a warehouse.

What an evening it was listening to all of this and yet with the music half way through and at the end there was a chilled out thoughtful vibe in The Front Room at the Elizabeth Hall.