Spotlight on Desree
Artist and Creative Writer

Desree, Its lovely to meet you! Imagine we’re in a lift and we’re going up to the 15th floor. We may never see each other again other than for this two minutes. Tell us about yourself before the doors open – go!

Erm… oh no… okay where to start? I am a full-time artist – which simultaneously means everything and nothing. I write poems, and plays, and I produce community creative projects and I facilitate workshops around drama and poetry. I’ve never had a pet other than a fish I won at a fair - that didn’t last very long. I am a cool auntie and a godmother. I love music and often write to music and have been known to do a poem or two with a live band or some insanely talented musical producers. I grew up in a town called Slough that people tend to know either by the John Betjeman poem or The Office. I have two star signs because I’m born on the cusp. Erm… how much time is left?

You’ve had a pretty incredible career, performing at The Royal Albert Hall and being engaged as artist in residence at Glastonbury. But we all know work in the creative sector can be tough to establish yourself in. Can you think of a moment when you thought to yourself – ok, this is it, I’m definitely here, doing this, and it’s sustainable.

Hahaha, that sounds like a funny joke. I live in London, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis – sustainability doesn’t really exist here. But to be honest, I can’t really chalk it back to one particular moment – it was when I started to diversify my work and what it meant to me to be a working artist, gave me the ability to live off this. For example, producing community programming or facilitate workshops is me using my artistry – and learning tools to enable me to do those things better, also makes me a better writer and spoken word artist.

Sometimes it can be hard to motivate yourself as a freelance creative. Can you give us any tips to get around those slump or burnout moments?

Rest! Erykah Badu calls it downloading time. We are constantly ingesting so much, that when we go to create, sometimes all the things we’ve stored haven’t fully processed yet. So, rest! It is so important for freelance creatives as we are always on our way to the project or thinking about the next thing without letting our minds and bodies just take a second.

You’ve done a lot of work to open up the creative sector to a broader range of voices. Can you tell us a little more about this and why it’s so important to you?

I think this is because poetry was never accessible to me growing up and I didn’t think it was ‘for me’ and was never ever positioned as though it could be. If you told me at 13, I would grow up and be writing poetry as a career, I could never imagine how I would have gotten to that path. All the poets I looked at in school were dead, cis, white men and I was really annoyed to find out that there are a lot, (and I mean A LOT) of other poets out there. When we think about poetry being the voice of generations, we cannot exclude ourselves. We give young people these old white men, tell them how important it was for them to write about that time, in that place, using the language used then, and then ask them to recreate that?! I want poems that have the word Rizz in, or Bussin’ – I want to hear voices that speak to this time, I want to hear voices of the people.

Recently, a politician talked about wanting to get rid of ‘mickey mouse’ degrees and qualifications. He particularly highlighted a degree in Circus as one of these, and also referenced other creative sectors as possibly unimportant or an add on. Thoughts?

I have one of these mickey mouse degrees that they so speak of! To be honest, who cares what the (now ex) government think? After 14 years in power and a record level of incompetence – Latin or Classics didn’t exactly stop that hot mess did it?

You’re well known for being a poet. You’re on an island by yourself for a year and you can only take 5 poems or song lyrics. What are they going to be?

AHHHHHHH! Ok… right now:

  • Ghetts – Anakin (Red Saber)
  • Gboyego Odubanjo – Confessions in 3 / 4 Timings
  • Simone Carty – Underwater
  • Niki Giovanni – A Poem for A Lady Whose Voice I Like
  • Fatimah Asghar – Pluto Shits on the Universe

Finally, we want to see/hear what you do. Where do we go?

Instagram? @Dezziiee_
Website maybe? Iamdesree.co.uk