Writing & Poetry
I am primarily a performance poet, writing a lot about the current political climate in the UK and the wider world, but also on topics such as mental health, introspection, family, grief and landscapes.
I started writing as a way to express difficult and confusing feelings in an artistic way and it is now an intrinsic part of life.
I also write on similar themes for page and stage.
Spoken Word Poems
‘Where We Are’
I was commissioned by Apples and Snakes for their 40 year anniversary ‘Future Voices’ commissions. It is a video I’m very proud of, because it includes the mouths and voices of 22 brilliant Northern voices (including my own).
'Fat Cats'
If there’s money for the coronation, there’s money for welfare.
Scarcity funding is a political choice.
Rishi’s rolling and Suella’s swimming in it –
Grant is gilded and Penny’s prospering off it.
Jeremy and James, Jovial due to it –
Shows there is enough of it.
If there’s money for the coronation, there’s money for the arts.
Scarcity funding is a political choice.
Oliver’s opulent, Ben is bloated on it.
Michael, Mark and Michelle, all are made of it.
Alex is affluent cos of it –
Shows there is enough of it.
If there’s money for the coronation, there’s money for social housing.
Scarcity funding is a political choice.
Kemi’s quids in and Saffron’s silk stockinged on it.
Théresè is terribly well-off and Gillian’s pockets jam packed with it.
Steve has substantial amounts of it –
Shows there is enough of it.
If there’s money for the coronation, there’s money for the NHS.
Scarcity funding is a political choice.
Lucy is lavish and Greg is grandiose on it.
Chris is comfortable and Allistair’s got abundance of it.
David gets deluxe with it –
Shows there is enough of it.
If there’s money for the coronation, there’s money to feed the poor.
Scarcity funding is a political choice.
'Body of Evidence'
I feel as though I’m being pulled apart and down at the same time –
like my earlobes are weighted,
dragging my chin to meet the soles of my shoes each time I take a step.
I find it hard to believe that there are some people who do not feel this way –
who have not always felt this way,
who walk around, chin high without the worry
that the area where the base of your skull meets
the peak of your spine will become larger
as your head flag removes itself from its post
to tumble down and meet the ground.
Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with it all I have to lie on the ground.
My feet are firmly planted on the ground.
So much so, it’s hard to lift them off of it and into the air,
if only for a brief moment before they, inevitably,
return to their rightful resting place.
Like the final crack that breaks the disabled person’s back,
I am exhausted.
My spine is splintered.
My knees are hyper-extended into a crescent shape.
My fingers seem to be held together only by the tissue surrounding them
and my shoulders cannot carry the weight
of all of these existentialisms.
What if I get worse?
What if I am always in pain until the day that I die?
Will I greet the earth earlier than expected?
My fingertips continue to bind themselves together as I walk –
as if the core of my being cannot let them separate and individualise;
the tension is what keeps the hand together.
What keeps the whole body together –
I try to hold myself together while acknowledging the anticipation that I might fall apart.
I am told my thumb shouldn’t be able to touch my wrist when pushed back –
but it can.
My thumbs ache from being too far separated from their true pride of place.
I’m told that my hips shouldn’t move in that way,
but they do.
My hips try to push themselves outward from the coccyx is by at least a millimetre a day,
there are quotas to be met, after all.
What does it mean when your own body betrays you?
When the thing you love most is to walk all day, through the park, down into the dene with the dog bounding with you, but that leaves you in excruciating pain and stiffness for days afterwards?
Does it mean that it’s not for you?
Does it mean that you are simply unlucky? –
Does it mean that you are forever destined to have to defend and collect yourself like a body of evidence
to a jury of doctors and nurses
and specialists who will poke and prod and test and scan and tug and bend and take and gawk?
Does it mean that if your knees are in conjunction with your wrists
and your ankles are in cohorts with your collarbone,
you should just accept that a life of pain
and constant speculation is the only way forward?
That you should have raised eyebrow after raised eyebrow –
how old are you?
And you have that much wrong with you at, what, 20?
I laugh it off, say I’ll be fucked in a few years time –
but, oh, I’m sorry,
did I make this conversation awkward for you?
No, you’re right, keep prying into my medical history.
No, you’re right. I simply cannot be disabled.
But there are no right answers to your questions.
I checked, down on the floor where my anvil meets the pebbles.
'Bucket List Poem'
I want to write about finding that song you’ll never get sick of
I want to write about the relief when the bra finally comes off
I want to write about finding a tenner in your pocket
I want to write about gigs when you know you have rocked it
I want to write about smelling that perfume that reminds you of them
I want to write about the pride of getting your eyeliner just right and even
I want to write about the feeling of getting into bed with fresh clean sheets
I want to write about trawling through charity shops for trinkets and antiques
I want to write about realising past you has already done the dishes
I want to write about making your own new, fitting traditions
I want to write about finding that outfit that feels just right
I want to write about staying up and talking all through the night
I want to write about butterflies, crushes and looks across the room
I want to write about gay panic and how relationships bloom
I want to write about huggers that never let go first
I want to write about feeling so much joy you think that you might burst
I want to write about how you’re sort of the cool kid now
I want to write about having a home, not just a house
I want to write about human life like its sacred
I want to write about art like we all have access to it
I want to write about voting like it’ll make a difference
I want to write about public transport like its in the public interest
I want to write about independence like its a given
I want to write about school supplies like teachers don’t have to pay for them
I want to write about water like its always clean
I want to write about medication like it is always free
I want to write about children like they’re all safe and loved
I want to write about homelessness like it’s something society is above
I want to write about food like it fills people up
I want to write about compassion like there is enough
I want to write about pregnancy like its always chosen
I want to write about queer elders like we’ll get to be them
I want to write about the past like its not repeating
I want to write about power like it’s not a birth right but awarded by voting
I want to write about chocolate and bath being the only bomb variations
I want to write about our government like they’re not the reason we’re in this situation
I want to write about heating like its affordable
I want to write about time like its equally granted to all
I want to write about protests like they are free
I want to write about education like it’s not hierarchied with money
I want to write about time off like it is encouraged
I want to write about mental health like it is acknowledged
I want to write about the press like its not privatised
I want to write about individualism like it is idolised
I want to write about war and genocide like its a thing off the past
I want to write about peace like I know it will last.
I want to write about the future like its a given that remains
I want to write about my words like they have a currency, made up in change
I want to write about family
I want to write about love
I want to write about power redistributed
To those below from those above
I want to write about power
Like its only electrical
I Want to write about blood
like it’s only ever ventricle
I want to write about freedom
I want to write about rights
I want to write about action, now
By protest and by strike
I want to write about everything
Or maybe nothing at all
I want to write because I can write
Not because I’m documenting the fall
'Politely Decline'
Do not ask me if I want an orange.
I do not want a fucking orange –
They stink.
I could smell them at the other end of the playground at school,
And I can smell them now as we sit on our lunch break.
I politely decline.
Apparently it’s not socially acceptable to tell someone where to shove said spherical fruit –
But, no.
I, under no circumstances, want your spare orange.
You open it by ramming your clean – no longer clean- nail into the skin , which by the way is a vile texture to begin with;
And the juice and pulp gets under your fingernails and onto your fingers which are now sticky.
What a delight.
And then you peel off the shed, bit by bit
To reveal that awful
White stuff –
That’s all strings and gross and you have to pick some of it off because there’s too much of it over some of the segments.
And – oh my god – why is it like a spider web?
And then the eating.
You tear a chunk of it away from the rest of the body of pulp,
and it makes that horrible sound:
Not quite a ripping sound but a
Horrible ‘Slrrch’ noise.
And then you bite into the segment-
Breaking skin with teeth –
Juice spattering all around and onto your white shirt.
Oops! You say.
Oops indeed.
Oops indeed.
And then you reach three fingers into your mouth to retrieve the pierce de resistance of sensory assaults in food – a rogue pip.
It’s fucking vile.
So no.
I do not want a fucking orange.
But thanks for asking
I guess.
'The Table'
Eee, hey!
D’yu rememba all them nights playin’ the bingo-board-game in the kitchen, on the valentines-gift-table He wrote under for his wife years ago?
There was no prizes to the games.
Nout but them and you on a summer’s neet,
after eating questionable food wi’ watered-down ketchup while learning rude songs “not to be repeated to parents” (that yu repeated to parents and got them in trouble for). And d’yu rememba repeating everything at least twice, to She who refused to wear a hearing aid
despite being deef aal Her life,
fuelling the joke that when He asked ‘a out all them years ago, He asked ‘a in ‘a deef ear and
Shu didn’t kna what Shu was saying yes to.
A think she probably started it – like telling all us bairns that She got married in
an awld fur coat,
ney knickers,
one shoe and one wellyboot.
Wu aal believed ‘a at one time or another.
Shu loved playin wi’ wu like that,
like takin ‘a false teeth out to scare the little’uns. Later shu’d do it on request tu make wu laugh.
And d’yu remember how, despite there being so many of us, He always made wu feel so special?
Teaching wu things beyond wa years and,
when wu understood, he was so proud.
And when wu didn’t, he was patient.
A kna I was definitely His worst chess opponent, but
He played with iz anyways.
He kept playing, and teaching.
D’yu remember where wu all got wa love fa
crosswords,
and sudoku
and word searches?
His morning paper.
And yu’d go wi’ Him to go get it,
and come out wi’ some sweets or one of them
weird sticky aliens that wa’ meant to have babies but never did? And yu’d sit and do them togetha – pencil first.
And how He’d let wu use His laptop with the wifi dongle to play solitaire
and minesweeper,
which He tried to explain a few times
but A still don’t really undastand.
D’yu remember them trips to the beach
“for an ice cream”, when wu’d come back with
buckets full u’ pebbles for the raised bed in ‘a back garden? And how shu’d get us up there to replace them all, and “grab the weeds while we’re up there an’orl”. D’yu remember the drives to neywhere,
wi’ some charity shop stops on the way?
Sometimes, yu’d go wi’ Her, and be spoilt rotten – yu’d be given money to pick ‘one thing’
and then, shu’d pick another fa yu
and then, pay for the thing yu picked in the first place. And then, shu’d always gi’ you some change
to give t’ someone homeless too.
Some days, though, yu’d stay wi’ Him in the car – listening to James Blunt Back to Bedlam or,
once he got an AUX system, CeeLo Green Fuck you, and reading — everything from fiction to manuals.
And after all that, yu’d sit at the valentines-gift-table at the end of the day,
belly full and happy,
playing the bingo-board-game wi’ no clue that undaneath was the message He wrote for Her:
‘Jim loves Olive’.
Wu all forgot some of them memories that shaped wu until recently.
Wu all forgot
until wu found the message again
when tha’ was neyone left to sit at the table.
'Moderate'
Defined by me bank balance and therefore I’m negative
I look at ya month’s-rent-north face and feel fracking argumentative
People say your dog looks like you, but my overdraft is like me,
Constantly overstimulated and unfamiliar to the bourgeoisie.
Yu show off ya new three stripes but you’re nout but a bore –
They’re basic, mine are special, because they’ve got four.
Ya filming a charity shop thrift haul for your TikTok page
But when I dressed from the bargain bin yous were full of outrage
Nout but clashing patterns, now you call it maximalism
Your charity shop hauls are nout but poverty tourism
Gifted a new car at 17, unaware of the privilege
You’re destined to be a landlord, Living in your parents’ image
My landlord attends church, ingesting the sedative telt by Marx
Thinks a camel can pass through a needle but only two could fit on the arc
He seems to ignore the parts of the scripture that he doesn’t like
Hypocrisy coming out of his ears and running down our blocked pipes
Three lots of povvos paying his second mortgage
I know that Penny-pincher’s not penny-pinching in this cost-of-greed powered coin shortage
He’s a fairtyale villan, not arsed if we have hot running water
Like Rumplestiltskin rinsing me dry, waiting to ask for my first son or daughter
The welfare state is crumbling, people being left for dead
But we’re all too tired to fight back cos we’re both fed up and fucking unfed
Rishi just upgraded his local power grid to support his private pool
In his area they’ve cut leisure centre hours ‘cos of the effects of his party’s rule
Suella’s referring to humans as aliens – wonder where we’ve heard that before
Facists hiding in see-through guizes, while the media feigns not knowing the score
The TERFS are rallying the same old rhetoric once used to attack the gays
But if the neo-Nazis agree with you, you might want to rethink your ways
You say your politics are moderate but A don’t know what that means
‘Cos if you’re not on the side of the oppressed, you’re on the side of the extreme
And don’t get me started on Starmer, Labour leader against the strikes –
A tiger in a kitten costume, failing to conceal your stripes.
Your ‘moderate’ policies are nout but gory – And I know the end of this story.
As Louie Walsh sort of said : “if you look like a Tory, and you sound like a Tory… you’re probably a fucking Tory”
“Amy Langdown is just like the Tyne. Their poetry will take you on a journey, she creates flow effortlessly with tone and rhythm. She has carved a space into the landscape of the North-East creative scene like no one else, shaping the way that we listen and make.
She is one of my biggest inspirations and, like the great rivers that gave life to our region, Amy is a force to be reckoned with. She is the proof that by choosing to speak with accent and dialect our words can not only hold great meaning but have incredible power. Thank you Amy, I share my poetry because you showed me the radical joy in using your voice.”
– Lizzie Lovejoy (writer, illustrator)
“Amy Langdown is just like the Tyne. Their poetry will take you on a journey, she creates flow effortlessly with tone and rhythm. She has carved a space into the landscape of the North-East creative scene like no one else, shaping the way that we listen and make.
She is one of my biggest inspirations and, like the great rivers that gave life to our region, Amy is a force to be reckoned with. She is the proof that by choosing to speak with accent and dialect our words can not only hold great meaning but have incredible power. Thank you Amy, I share my poetry because you showed me the radical joy in using your voice.”
– Lizzie Lovejoy (writer, illustrator)
Achievements
Awards
– I won the New Writing North Northern Writers’ Matthew Hale Award in 2018
– I have been twice shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize, in 2017 and 2022
Organisations
I have worked with cultural organisations including New Writing North, Curious Arts, Poet in the City, The Customs House, Apples & Snakes, Newcastle Libraries and The Theatre Royal.
Publications
– ‘Voices of the Silenced Generation’ zine
– ‘New Writing North Young Writers’ 18-25′ Zine
– ‘Kerflop’ Zine
– ‘The Science of Mystery’ (young people’s pulp) zine
– ‘The North’ Zine
– ‘The Terry Kelly Poetry Prize anthology’, 2017 & 2022
– Fragmented Voices’ ‘Inspire: Poems with Breath in Them’ anthology
– The Chronicle
– The Northumberland Gazette
– Narc Magazine
Events and Venues
– Cobalt Studios (Born Lippy)
– Northumberland Pride
– Northern Stage (The Reaching Out Festival)
– Tees Women Poets TWOOMPH
– Cluny 2
– Newcastle Poetry Festival (Geet Muckle Slam)
– Customs House (The Take Over Festival)
– Live Theatre
– Northern Pride (Curious Arts stage)
– Durham Fringe Festival
– The Cumberland Arms
Achievements
Awards
– I won the New Writing North Northern Writers’ Matthew Hale Award in 2018
– I have been twice shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize, in 2017 and 2022
Organisations
I have worked with cultural organisations including New Writing North, Curious Arts, Poet in the City, The Customs House, Apples & Snakes, Newcastle Libraries and The Theatre Royal.
Publications
– ‘Voices of the Silenced Generation’ zine
– ‘New Writing North Young Writers’ 18-25′ Zine
– ‘Kerflop’ Zine
– ‘The Science of Mystery’ (young people’s pulp) zine
– ‘The North’ Zine
– ‘The Terry Kelly Poetry Prize anthology’, 2017 & 2022
– Fragmented Voices’ ‘Inspire: Poems with Breath in Them’ anthology
– The Chronicle
– The Northumberland Gazette
– Narc Magazine
Events and Venues
– Cobalt Studios (Born Lippy)
– Northumberland Pride
– Northern Stage (The Reaching Out Festival)
– Tees Women Poets TWOOMPH
– Cluny 2
– Newcastle Poetry Festival (Geet Muckle Slam)
– Customs House (The Take Over Festival)
– Live Theatre
– Northern Pride (Curious Arts stage)
– Durham Fringe Festival
– The Cumberland Arms
Playwriting
‘Bombing’
My Short play ‘Bombing‘, which follows the increasingly complicated relationship between two friends, Dylan and James as they navigate the awkward teenage years, complex feelings and being a ‘lad’. It has been produced twice, both times by Squiggle Productions with Rachel Stockdale as director.
It was first staged for Four New Plays at The Central Bar, Gateshead. It starred Kieron Michael and Aiden Nord. It was then staged again for ‘‘Best of’ Four New Plays’ at Durham Fringe Festival, starring Elijah Young and Ben Gettins.
Live Theatre Playwriting Course
I was selected to be a part of the Live Theatre Playwriting cohort of 2022/23.
The course was a 10-week intensive playwriting course exploring the key aspects of writing a play for the stage. It included specialist classes with theatre professionals including Bruntwood Prize winner Anna Jordan (Succession/Killing Eve) and BAFTA Breakthrough Vinay Patel (Murdered By My Father/Doctor Who).
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