Spoken word | Music Projects | collaboration

Benjamin j. Wilson

Poet & Musician

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 to 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, capitalism 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 creating imperfections due to sheer concentration.

The piece culminated in a performance commissioned by Ty Pawb and 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

These wrist-war champions can still drink all the no-you-cants under the table…

Gresford Workshop

Exploring History, industry, Extraction & community through food and sound

This was a fully immersive workshop designed to spark discussion around culture, community and identity.

Delivered at the Wrexham Miners Project, based in the old mine rescue centre, we used a soundscape built out of a documentary about the impact of slate querying on north wales, cooking oggies filled with Polish pierogi and listening to protest songs about mining disasters from Gresford to Durham.

This sparked discussion about fighting against English colonial extraction, corporate greed then and now, the power of working-class organising, migration, inclusion, hope, determination… and how having a main and a pudding in one pie is a most excellent idea - especially when the flavours can both root you to home and allow you to explore other cultures.