On the day that thousands of anti-racism protestors stood firm against a march of UKIP supporters, what better event to go to than a showcase of the work created by the Poets of Colour Incubator programme. Previously debuted in Manchester, this showcase was a combination of spoken word, paintings, performance pieces and music, with the boundaries and borders between them blurred and softened in the work of all three poets.

The first was Newcastle’s own Ilisha Thiru Purcell with Sleep (e)Quality, a series of work about how sleep is not neutral - it is racialised and politicised, and not everyone is allowed to rest. I’m always a fan of the gently lyrical resistance in Ilisha’s poetry and her way of talking about deep, painful issues in a way that holds a listener close, but I was especially enthralled by her more experimental piece in this performance about an engineer who fixes machines that control your dreams.

Jeremy Pak Nelson’s The Homes We Carry explores what home is, especially in a place where you have no history, no community. It’s a big theme that becomes intensely personal in his performance, most memorably in his final poem about a bird who has come to nest again near his parents home, despite its nest being destroyed by winds the previous two years. Third time lucky, his parents write. His work brims with quiet hope.

The final performer was Princess Arinola Adegbite with Algorithm of Meaning, a surrealist dive into how AI and technology intersect with families and relationships. She is an incredible performer, dynamic and engaging, with lines of poetry that spun around my head for ages afterwards, but I was slightly disheartened by the AI generated videos that accompanied some of her poems. She talked knowledgeably about how she wanted to use generative AI ethically and only input her own work, but I was glad to see a nuanced discussion in the Q&A about how AI is built on stolen work and is therefore difficult to use ethically, not to mention the environmental impact.

Whether sweeping or personal, happy or sad, this collection of work was underlined with empathy and hope, with each poet looking to both the future and the past to ground themselves in their themes of sleep, home and technology. I can’t wait to see what the Poets of Colour Incubator produces next.