‘Joelle Taylor’s poetry roars and soars and conjures up the most extraordinary images to express the unsayable, the shocking, and ultimately the great compassion she feels for the plight of women around the world’ Bernardine Evaristo

‘A riot of a book, a protest for justice and peace. A book of songs that must be be heard, here is a triumphant call to arms and an epic and glorious read. I have nothing but high praise for Joelle Taylor and this is her best work yet.’ Salena Godden

‘Songs My Enemy Taught Me is an absolutely necessary poetry collection. It is essential for the poet to sing our women selves into the world. Taylor articulates the music of a collective silence perpetuated against women’s oppression. She enacts poetry as song, music, melody. The poems are testimony, odes, praise, acknowledgments, libation, laments, records, reprtage, vulnerable and unapologetically personal. This collection asserts that poetry is here to do work. These poems of witness are a reckoning, where the poet says – woman, I am you, I see you, I feel you. Says women – our skin, breasts, vulva, wombs are a target in a war heavy with silence. Taylor’s poems seek to find the melodies in the many silences and sing them into creation. The poems in this book punch the reader’s imagination with powerful fists.’ Malika Booker

‘Songs My Enemy Taught Me is a collection of poems themed around the experiences of women globally, but it had simple beginnings. It began with me. It began with a small child in a hotel room not wanting to speak. It began with opera, but the kind that cannot be heard.  It began at the point at which I ended.

This is a book about colonisation and terrorism, about invasion and ownership. It is a survival manual, a map, a photograph, a song. It is internet at 2am. It is the way your mother just looked at you. It is the way the girl in front of you on the soft journey home just reached for her keys. It is your hand reaching for keys.’

Songs My Enemy Taught Me is now ready for pre-order on the Out-Spoken Press website, and will be released on July 10th. A series of tour dates to support the book and featuring guest poets and book editors Anthony Anaxagorou and Sabrina Mahfouz will begin on July 11th:

TOUR DATES

July 11 – Bournemouth, Word Makers: Chaplin’s Cellar Bar 529 Christchurch Road BH1 4AG 7.30pm

July 16 – Walthamstow Garden Party 4.30pm

July 18 – Canterbury Parade Room, 1 Pound Lane, Canterbury – with Sabrina Mahfouz

July 19 – London Launch @ Out-Spoken, 100 Club, with Salena Godden, Anthony Anaxagorou, Sabrina Mahfouz and Karim Kamar £10 (free copy of the book for all ticket holders)

July 20 – Bristol Launch @Raise the Bar, The Crofters Rights 117-119 Stokes Croft Bristol BS1 3RW with Danny Pandolfi, Sabrina Mahfouz and Gecko

July 21 – Stamford Arts Centre with Charley Genever

July 22 – Poem-a-Thon for to raise money for the Poetry Café, Covent Garden, London. All day

July 24 – Blacks Club, Soho, London hosted by Sophia Blackwell

July 26 – For Books Sake (What She Said) The Book Club, 100-106 Leonard Street, EC2A 4RH

July 31 – Polari Southbank Centre with Paul Burston, Rosie Wilby, Alys Fowler, James Maker & James Wharton

August 2 – Invisible Outlaws – Lesbian, Bi and Trans voices. The Bedford, Balham Sw12 9HD with Sophia Blackwell 6.30-9.30pm

August 3 – Middlesbrough book launch at Electric Kool Aid Cabaret, in MIMA with Andy Willoughby and Bob Beagrie

August 4 – Lipped Ink @ The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, London Wc2H 9BX

August 12 – Diversity Slam for Margate Pride with Neanderthal Bard