ABSTRACT
Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (MPK) has a 17 year history supporting and nurturing writers. Malika Booker co-founded MPK in 2001 to create a nourishing and nurturing community for writers. Indeed, this was before many established mentoring schemes and the plethora of writing workshops and courses were easily available. A strong kinship grew amongst the writers, many of whom were from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) backgrounds. MPK (the collective) often perform their work at festivals and other public platforms. In time MPK helped to challenge the underrepresentation of BME writers in published poetry by influencing programmes such as the Complete Works.
This chapter addresses its impact on the current performance poetry landscape and how it has affected wider diversity in performed and published poetry today. Additionally, this chapter explores how the MPK model influenced writers’ groups and collectives in the UK and beyond. MPK has connections with Chicago, through former member Peter Kahn and the Teenage Poetry Slam, where MPK writers were mentors for teenagers in London schools, and the winning teams travelling to Chicago to see poetry thrive state-wide. MPK has supported writers including Inua Ellams, Warsaw Shire and Aoife Mannix, with guest tutors including Kwame Dawes, Fred D’Aguiar and Bernadine Evaristo. This chapter will include interviews with past and present members, including Malika Booker.
