The Slam Queen: The Journey of Joelle Taylor

Joelle Taylor is a British poet, performer, playwright, and educator.

Life and Career

Joelle Taylor was born on 18 January 1967, in Lancashire, United Kingdom. She moved to London after hitchhiking there from Lancashire, where she was brought up. In 2000, Taylor was the UK Performance Poetry Slam Champion. 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.

Her collection “Songs My Enemy Taught Me” was published by longtime collaborator Anthony Anaxagorou in 2017, through his company, Out-Spoken Press. She has toured the UK several times as a solo poet, as well as Australia and Southeast Asia in 2018. She is the poet in residence at several schools and performs and teaches across the country. She co-curates and hosts Out-Spoken, a monthly live poetry and music night currently in long-term residence at London’s Southbank Centre. She is the commissioning editor of Out-Spoken Press for 2021–22.

Award and Legacy

Her collection “C+nto: & Othered Poems” won the prestigious 2021 T. S. Eliot Prize. She was also awarded a 2022 Polari Prize for the same collection. In 2000, Taylor was the UK Performance Poetry Slam Champion. Taylor’s work continues to inspire readers and writers around the world. Her exploration of identity and the immigrant experience in “C+nto: & Othered Poems” has been particularly impactful.

She is currently a lecturer in creative writing at King’s College London, where she influences the next generation of writers and thinkers. 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. In 2022, Taylor was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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