Sleep, AI and the concept of home explored by poets of colour at first public readings

Having moved to Manchester from Hong Kong in 2018, Jeremy Pak Nelson addresses themes of migration in his work including his poem The Homes We Carry, which navigates how the homelands of our ancestors and our past selves stay with us through food, rituals and objects.

He said: “I’ve taken themes of diaspora and incorporated people’s perspective of home, and how we use concepts like food and music to evoke the feeling of home. I’ve been lucky enough to work with an artist called Ula Fung who’s painted an amazing canvas on this theme, which I’m planning to incorporate into my final performance.

“It was great to test my poetry out on a live audience at the scratch performance. This has been a real community collaboration too.”

Earlier this year, the poets took part in drop-in sessions where Manchester Met Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing and MA Performance students, as well as members of the public, were invited to input into the poets’ creative process. In Princess Arinola Adegbite’s case, this meant gaining their perspectives on her theme of artificial intelligence.

Arinola Adegbite, a poet, performance artist, filmmaker and musician from Salford, performed Algorithms of Meaning at the scratch performance. The piece asks ‘Who is the future for?’ and explores how people arrive at meaning-making in the age of artificial intelligence and technology.

She said: “It was amazing to test out new material to a live audience. The positive response to the work was affirming and reminded me why AI and technology is a global issue, especially considering concerns around what AI language models can do to our power grid and environment.

“The performance went well, and it was so beautiful to be in the company of my fellow incubator poets.”

Ilisha Thiru Purcell, a poet based in and from Newcastle upon Tyne, has chosen to explore sleep as a health inequality and the language of dreams in her work. Her project has involved delving into her own dreams and interviewing other people about their relationship with sleep.