Veranda is London’s flagship and O.G poetry and music jam– featuring a house band boasting London’s top emerging musicians, and an audience made up of minds ready for meditation, conversation and creative elevation. Veranda facilitates experimental live performance that prioritises Afro-diasporic narratives; opening up space for rhythmic dialogue + curious encounters.
This edition of Veranda is celebrating the origins of dub poetry with headline sets from MALIKA BOOKER and JAMES MASSIAH. A DJ set of dancehall, soca and funky house from 16THSS (Voices Radio, Recess) and a house band led by our Musical Director NATE RICKETTS (Steamdown). Hosted by our Creative Directors BELINDA ZHAWI + MALAKAÏ SARGEANT
There will be an opportunity to perform on our open mic. If this sounds like a bit of you, get in touch with a sample of your work before 22 August with your name and 'Veranda open mic' in the subject line. Shout us on bornfreejam@gmail.com.
James Massiah (he/him)
@jamesmassiah
James Massiah is a poet & musician from South London, UK whose work explores ideas about sexuality, mortality & philosophy through performance, writing & visual media.
His ongoing series of New Poems is released in volumes and details his day-to-day experiences of life, love and labour in London. He has been commissioned to produce work for the BBC, the Guardian & Nike as well as featuring in campaigns for Selfridges, Loewe, Adidas & Champion.
He has performed readings at the Tate Modern, the Courtauld, the Institute of Contemporary Arts & the Houses of Parliament & been profiled in Vogue, Dazed, i-D & GQ. He has also curated events for Boiler Room & hosts the monthly ‘Poætry Show’ on NTS Radio.
Malika Booker (she/her)
@malika.booker
Malika Booker is a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian parentage, and co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.
Her pamphlet Breadfruit, (flippedeye, 2007) received a Poetry Society recommendation and her poetry collection Pepper Seed (Peepal Tree Press, 2013) was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize for first full collection. She is published in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017).
Malika recently co-edited the issue of Stand Journal curating an anthology of poems by African American, Black British, & Caribbean Women & Identifying Writers. Booker currently hosts and curates Peepal Tree Press’ literary podcast, New Caribbean Voices. A Cave Canem Fellow, and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022). Her poem The Little Miracles, commissioned by and published in Magma 75 (autumn 2019) won The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2020). Her poem Libation, published in Poetry Review (winter 2022) won The Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2023).