Simon Mole is a London-based poet, emcee, and theatre-maker with a love for the craft of writing. Simon built his skills at open-mics and battles on the Brighton hip-hop scene. He has shared the bill with Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Polarbear, Simon Armitage and Kate Tempest, playing venues including Waterstones Piccadilly, Latitude Festival, and Southbank Centre. He is one fifth of the Chill Pill Collective, curating and performing at popular poetry nights at Soho Theatre and the Albany. Simon has been a guest on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb, and in 2013 was Brent’s first ever Poet Laureate.
Simon is an experienced facilitator using poetry as an enabling tool for all. He has worked with a wide range of people, including the porters at Guys Hospital; primary school children on South Kilburn Estate; and teenagers at Guildhall and Keats House (City of London).
2 Minute Interview:
How do your performance and workshop with NOW relate to being in the moment?
Some days I am moving easily through the world and I am aware of being present and I am so full with this feeling I could burst. In a good way. Mostly though, I find it hard to relax. I rush to finish things, to have done something rather than be doing it. That restlessness worms its way into my writing process. And this makes me mad but it is hard to stop. Learning to stay is the work of a lifetime. Poems are part of that work. Seeing and re-seeing the world. Occasionally I craft a poem which feels like a living thing in its own right. Something that is of the world as well as referring to it. Something which exists in the moment, again and again.
What are you most looking forward to doing within your NOW Festival slot?
The poet Stephen Dobyns says that writing a poem is one of the ways to love the world. I’m sure there are plenty of others, some of which might initially sound more exciting than picking up a pen and thinking hard. I’m looking forward to hearing about the tiny and important things that people think deserve a poem and then hearing them read those poems half an hour later…
Do you have any tips on how the audience can best benefit from your performance and workshop at NOW Festival?
Leave everything / come as you are / have breakfast on the island.
At Deptford Lounge:
Simon Mole’s Workshop:
Simon will be leading a workshop about writing as right now, again and again and again: a relaxed workshop about writing as a way to love the world. Join Simon and compose an instant ode to Deptford, a haiku to hold up your neighbours or a rap about finding peace in SE8…
Simon Mole’s Performance:
Right now, again and again and again: A mixture of poetry and chat exploring the idea of the poem as perpetually present, and the impact that writing about the world has on our experience of it. Come and hear Simon’s specially commissioned NOW poem as part of NOW Live Events at Deptford Lounge.