In this episode, poet Sue Brown talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to her - 'Truth' by Jean 'Binta' Breeze.

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Sue joined The Poetry Exchange at the Birmingham & Midland Institute and is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

Sue Brown writes from the heart and the soul. Her words pull from the dialect of her local community, from the long toned melodic speech of preachers and Maya Angelou, from mantras and incantations, from jazz. In her poetry, a lifetime in the making, she is a fighter and a lover, by turns rising up against the oppression that has dominated her peoples’ history, and rising skywards on the warm air of her compassion and her capacity for love. These poems move with a beat that speaks to hearts everywhere. They pulse with life, feeling like they could either be spoken or sung. Feel their rhythm. Feel their profound sensibility. And as Roy McFarlane says in his exuberant introduction to this book – ‘Let Rhythm Chant take a hold of you.’

'Truth' is taken from Jean Binta Breeze's 'Third World Girl - Selected Poems', published by Bloodaxe Books.

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Truth

by Jean 'Binta' Breeze

some years after

when the laughter came again

she grew her hair in locks around her head

and lived

simply

without even a bed but she

she had stories that woman

she had stories to tell

and children who listened well

and she

she hid nothing

made no excuses for self

just let

truth give her voice to the wind

and she would sing sometimes sing and

ask a little more time

for memory to swell their heads

the children gathered around her

the more they asked

the more words she was sent

words that crossed all ages

served no laws

words that questioned all they had been taught

so they put her away

one day

she must be mad

the adults say

corrupting young minds

it's obvious depraved

she grew silent then

her laughter grew thin

then left with the wind

but the children grew up and remembered

one woman who didn't lie

one woman who didn't hide

now they count the hypocrites among them

From 'Third World Girl, Selected Poems', 2011, Bloodaxe Books. Reproduced with kind permission of the publisher.

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