Poet Keith Fenton on why Leeds’ spoken word scene has become a community lifeline for many.
Keith Fenton has become something of a lynchpin of the local poetry and spoken word scene – it’s a role he wears lightly and which he’s settled into mostly through chance.
He first became interested in poetry and writing while growing up as a kid in South East London, where admitting to such a hobby would’ve been akin to: “grabbing a loudhailer and inviting people to rain blows on your head.”
As a young adult, Keith drifted through a chaotic decade of carousing while dabbling in travel writing before moving to Leeds 22 years ago and settling into fatherhood and a day job. Poetry took a back seat until, just before the pandemic, a friend encouraged him onto a community radio slot at Chapel FM, a community radio station in East Leeds: “It was good timing because if I hadn’t got in there then and started doing poetry on the radio, it probably wouldn’t have happened once the lockdowns hit.”
Throughout lockdown, the radio show kept going remotely and Keith, self-critical about his own performances, enrolled on an online course about how to read poetry aloud: “Anyone can write a poem, but not everyone can do a good one. And performing it well is a different kind of skill.”
When venues reopened, Keith got out there and went anywhere there was an open mic: Cardigan Arms, The Chemic, and Kirkstall Bridge to name a few. He noticed a fragmentation – nights split by age, style, or scene, closed off from each other: “It’s not that people are excluding anyone. It’s just that their spaces don’t always feel inviting to others. It’s hard to make a space that feels welcoming to everyone, but that’s something I try to do.”
A turning point came in June 2023 at an open mic that was going downhill until a chance late arrival – spoken word performer Danetta Coupland, known as the ‘hip hop granny’ – turned a dying room into what Keith calls ‘a happening’. Determined not to leave things to chance again, he took everyone’s numbers and started a WhatsApp group with 15 members.
There are now over 760, spanning poets, musicians, filmmakers, and DJs across the North, and it’s led to numerous collaborations, paid gigs, and entire new nights.
It also spawned Poets Talking Bollocks, the podcast Keith co-hosts, which has interviewed local wordsmiths alongside heavyweights like Ian Duhig and Andrew and Ian McMillan. The podcast’s gigs at The Chemic take place the second Sunday of each month, are free to attend, and have become a thriving showcase of local writing talent.
While arranging gigs, promoting others, and maintaining the incredibly active community WhatsApp groups, Keith prefers not to overstate his own role: “All I did was open a group. It wasn’t rocket science.”
But he proudly acknowledges what the scene can offer people beyond a stage.
For example, one of the collectives that’s grown out of Poets Talking Bollocks brings together women who have experienced domestic abuse: “One woman left her abusive partner after coming to one of our events and hearing someone else perform work about their experience. That’s genuinely radical action – it can come from a poem or a song – when someone responds by saying ‘that’s my life, and I can do something about it,’ and then does, that’s huge! That collective wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t started taking their poems places, and now they raise money for domestic abuse charities.”
A staunch advocate of nurturing the creative spirit in everyone and encouraging it out into the world, Keith feels he’s part of a much larger, ongoing project: “It’s a whole fabric we’re building, gradually making things a bit better so when we’re not around anymore, others can pick it up and carry on.
“What matters most is having communities that give people something to believe in. It’s a hard world out there, and we all love making art – playing music, painting, printmaking, poetry, everything. It’s nice if everyone shares it, and that’s much easier if people all know each other.”
