Speaking the City, Disrupting Its Discourses: How Poets like Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Leeds Young Authors Are Reclaiming Britain’s Multicultural Cities

Abstract

The spoken word and slam poetry of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Leeds Young Authors, performed live and broadcasted online, is redefining who shapes and constitutes the British city—here Leeds—and its literature today. This poetry constitutes a new lyric, intersubjective and plural form that directly expresses real life experience. The transnational influence of hip-hop and slam as powerful minority art forms has combined with the reach and interactive potential of the internet to expand the scope of poetry as a mode of expression for minority subjects today, decentring top-down discourses on British cities (largely based on London) literature, culture and society.