Spoken word | Music Projects | collaboration

Benjamin j. Wilson

Poet & Musician

Almost as serious as I look… DEfinitely not as thin

Spoken words, belted melodies and bashed-out beats… These are things things that can unite us in one collective moment.

They can also force us question power… Discordant melodies subvert the ear. Rhythms can shift and leave you feeling sea-sick.

Through poetry, songs, stories and soundscapes I try to explore and challenge ideas of masculinity, beauty. identity, climate, nature politics, colonialism, capatalism memory and mycelia - prizing collaboration and collective experience over solipsism.

I have also now started exploring using food, as well as poetry and music to critically explore our history and social relationships…

Glöwr

Glöwr is a collaboration between poet-musicians Ben Wilson & Natasha Borton, exploring the space between spoken word and music. These tracks began as fragments of writing lines of poetry, rhythms, and ideas that slowly found their way into beats, textures, and voice.

Made in Wrexham…

When it comes to poetry and music, I owe everything to Wrexham. More specifically I owe it all to VoiceBox - the spoken word collective that nurtured me at the begging, gave me a platform, and introduced me to so many inspiring writers and performers.

Since my involvement, I have headlined VB multiple times, performed in VB showcases at Focus Wales, and been involved in delivering workshops for Wrexham 2029 city of culture bid.

Anadl:Breathe

Fusing music & Spoken Word / Welsh & English - Funded by Arts Council wales

Adadl:Breathe - was an exploration in multiple art-forms, genres and languages.With collaboration at its core It brought together artists from Bangor and Bethesda to Wrexham and Llangollen.

Fusing spoken word, sweeping vocals, double bass, kalimba, fiddle, live drums and samples, we crossed boarders and cultures.

The project involved live performances in Pontio, Bangor and Ty Pawb in Wrexham, as well as the recording of and shooting of a video for the song Beneath the Waves.

Reapeat.

a Collaboration with Hanny Newton

Repeat. Was a project born out of an arts exchange. In this case it was a paring of an incredibly talented artist and embroiderer and a poet.

The main theme was intrusive repetitive thoughts - the odd patterns and rhythms that are formed and the trance like state one is in when thinking them.

This involved finding a repetitive phrase 'as ‘thinking about not thinking about thinking about not thinking about’ then creating a notation for the rhythm.

Hanny spent hours repeating the phrase as she drew the notations. Creating circles over a meter squared, with tear stains creaeting imperfections due to sheer concentration.

The piece culminated in a performance commissioned by wrexham council

Morning comes…

But this sunrise’s grin is tinted with malice

cracked-steeple teeth stained yellow as tabbaco

black-blue house sneer bruised as a punched mouth

filled with the heckles of jackdaw’s dawn courses calling at your window

Anamnesis

Poetry Pamphlet and Verve Poetry Press feature

‘Anamnesis tells of incomplete memories and past live: of the gaps and mistakes / of our filling in and amending / of trying to take responsibility / of breaking apathy / of failure and fragility / of posibility.

Told through storytelling using the rhythms of spoken word.

Anamneses - meaning the recollection of past lives - was my first self-published poetry pamphlet.

One of the pieces - Hands - was then chosen by poet Evrah Rose to be featured in her first collection - Unspoken - published by Verve Poetry Press.

Careers advice said, her hands are meant to be typists / secretarial hands to help men

She’s say ‘no they are never’ / they are a polite middle-finger-to-the-man pint-holding hands

page devouring / erudite travellers riding fifteen hands

Wild. Taming. Caring. Creative / and strong as a fucking tractor…