Inner City Rhythm: George the Poet spits words at Aye Write!

It’s not long since George the Poet was last in Glasgow – he played a gig here in February at the Berkley Suite. How did that go? We ask. "Magical. It was one of the best gigs I’ve done in a long time," he says. This time he’ll be up the road, in the Mitchell Library for Aye Write! – Glasgow’s book festival.

A different crowd, you’d think – but then George likes to keep his appeal broad. And he’s no stranger to crossing boundaries, whether he’s moving from rap to performance poetry or a London estate to a Cambridge college. Lots of his poems explore the gaps between things: the expectations of his teachers versus his ambitions; the reality of the city versus the idea of it that gets sold in mainstream media; the popular narrative of inner city poverty, drugs and aggression versus the complex, multi-layered society he grew up in.

But where has this socially motivated poet come from? These are the bare facts: he grew up on an estate in London, got to grammar school and then to Cambridge, where he read Politics, Psychology and Sociology. When he got to university, he stopped calling his verses rap, started calling them performance poetry, and people started to listen; he’s now got several thousand YouTube subscribers, and his videos rack up hundreds of thousands of views. There’s a deal with Island Records and a book of poems (Search Party) published by Ebury. Quite a lot, for a 24-year-old.

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"Don’t trust any of these guys" – George the Poet discusses the upcoming election

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So how does he feel about coming to a book festival? "Where I’m from, book festivals don’t feature – they’ve not been brought into our world. But we would go, and we would do it way more often if we felt they were for us. But I’m excited; a book festival is all about a sharing of ideas." And the ideas that he’s bringing to Glasgow are resolutely political: the introduction to Search Party begins with his alienation from the mainstream. And the voices he captures, the stories he tells, are all from the margins – the people that the political mainstream fail to represent. 

Inevitably, we talk about the election. It’s all stories there, too. "Don’t trust any of these guys," he says. "No one’s getting to the root of the problem. Nobody’s talking about any of the real problems. The division between north and south. The NHS being privatised. The huge inequality and the pay gap. The housing crisis. But you won’t find anyone talking about these things."

He stops. "Sorry, I’m getting all worked up here." I ask him who to vote for but he says no, he won’t be telling people who to vote for: he’s telling people to deepen their knowledge, and decide for themselves – that’s empowerment. It’s all quite stirring, for a fifteen-minute interview.

It’s testament to the skilful programming of Aye Write! that he’s got a headline slot on Saturday night. If you thought book festivals were about tents and deck chairs, George the Poet might just tear that hazy idea up for you.  

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More from The Skinny:

Aye Write! All Write: 10 Years of Literature in Glasgow 

Neu! Reekie! Waiting for the ink to dry

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