Joelle Taylor

Joelle Taylor RSL is a poet, playwright and author. She settled in London after hitchhiking there from Lancashire, where she was brought up.[1]

Joelle Taylor

FRSL
Born18 January / 31 December 1967
Lancashire, United Kingdom
OccupationPoet, performer, playwright, educator
NationalityBritish
Period1995–present
GenrePoetry, plays, non-fiction
Notable awards
Website
joelletaylor.co.uk

Career

In 2000, Taylor was UK Performance Poetry slam Champion.[1] She founded SLAMbassadors, the UK’s national youth slam championships, for The Poetry Society in 2001, and was its artistic director and national coach until 2018.[2][3][4] Her collection Songs My Enemy Taught Me was published by longtime collaborator Anthony Anaxagorou in 2017, through his company, Out-Spoken Press, and she has contributed the foreword to a children's poetry anthology published in 2017 by Otter-Barry Books.[5] She was awarded a Fellowship of the Arts in 2016, and was long listed for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017.

She has toured the UK several times as a solo poet, as well as Australia and South East Asia in 2018.

She is the poet in residence at a number of schools,[6] and performs and teaches across the country. She is a Subject for Study on the OCR GCSE English curriculum.

Her current emphasis is on working with groups of marginalised women globally, and on publishing their writing on her website, as well as on her online blog The Night Alphabet to coincide with her debut book of short stories of the same name.

She co-curates and hosts Out-Spoken, a monthly live poetry and music night currently in long-term residence at London's Southbank Centre.[7] She is commissioning editor of Out-Spoken Press for 2021–22.[8]

Taylor won the 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize[9][4][10] and a 2022 Polari Prize[11] for C+nto: & Othered Poems.

Taylor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.[12]

Personal life

Taylor is based in London.

Political views

In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Taylor signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[13][14]

Bibliography
  • Naming (play, 1994)[15]
  • Whorror Stories (play, 1995)[1][15]
  • Lesbians Talk Violent Relationships (Non-fiction, with Tracy Chandler, 1995, Scarlet Press
  • Whorror Stories II (play, 1996)[1]
  • Lucid Johnston (play, 2000)
  • Ska Tissue (poetry, 2011, Mother Foucault Press[3]
  • The Woman Who Was Not There (poetry, 2014, Burning Eye Books
  • Songs My Enemy Taught Me (poetry, 2017, Out-Spoken Press)
  • C+nto: & Othered Poems (poetry, 2021, Westbourne Press)

References
  1. "Joelle Taylor". Literature | British Council. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  2. "Joelle Taylor". The Poetry Society. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  3. "Joelle Taylor". Apples and Snakes. Archived from the original on 21 February 2017. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  4. Wood, Heloise (11 January 2022). "Taylor wins the £25k T S Eliot Prize for 'blazing book of rage and light'". The Bookseller. London. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  5. "Rising Stars – Otter – Barry Books". Otter-Barry Books. Archived from the original on 26 March 2017. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
  6. "Joelle Taylor – poet in residence for three Herefordshire high schools". Ledbury Poetry Festival. 27 January 2015. Retrieved 20 February 2017.
  7. Southbank Centre (2022). "Out-Spoken | Southbank Centre". Retrieved 27 June 2022.
  8. "About Out-Spoken Press". Out-Spoken. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  9. "T S Eliot Prize shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 15 October 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  10. Flood, Alison (10 January 2022). "Joelle Taylor wins TS Eliot poetry prize for 'blazing' C+nto & Othered Poems". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  11. "Taylor, Zmith win 2022 Polari Prizes". Books+Publishing. 16 November 2022. Retrieved 16 November 2022.
  12. Shaffi, Sarah; Knight, Lucy (12 July 2022). "Adjoa Andoh, Russell T Davies and Michaela Coel elected to Royal Society of Literature". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 11 September 2023.
  13. "Vote for hope and a decent future". The Guardian. 3 December 2019. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  14. Proctor, Kate (3 December 2019). "Coogan and Klein lead cultural figures backing Corbyn and Labour". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  15. Rapi, Nina; Chowdhry, Maya (2013). Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender, and Performance. Routledge. p. 24 – via Google Books. The collective has produced two plays to date - Naming and Whorror Stories - both written and co-directed by Joelle Taylor and premiered at the Oval House Theatre
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