• Skip to content
 
  • Log in
  • Contact us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
Spoken Word Archive
35 years
of performance poetry
  • Home
  • About
  • Artists & Shows
  • Our collection
  • Features
  • Get involved
  • Resources
You are here:
Home>Artists>Dorothea Smartt
Search by date
Search by artist
  • Lemn Sissay (96)
  • Jean 'Binta' Breeze (89)
  • Zena Edwards (88)
  • Patience Agbabi (83)
  • Francesca Beard (79)
  • Malika Booker (71)
  • Aoife Mannix (67)
  • John Hegley (61)
  • El Crisis (61)
  • Joolz Denby (56)

All artists

Search by venue
  • Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Covent Garden Community Centre (182)
  • Rich Mix (117)
  • Albany (London - Lewisham) (80)
  • Soho Theatre (64)
  • Nuffield (Southampton) (57)
  • Horseshoe (London - Islington) (52)
  • Roebuck (London - Camden) (51)
  • Victoria (Birmingham) (51)
  • Barbican (Plymouth) (48)

All venues

Dorothea Smartt

Contains 1 collection item, 16 performances, 17 in total. Currently showing 17 in total.

Dorothea Smartt was born and brought up in London and is of Barbadian heritage.   She worked for many local groups and Black/Women’s co-operatives in London while writing, then began to perform her work and contribute to poetry anthologies.

She was Poet in Residence at Brixton Market and Attached Live Artist at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where she was also awarded her first commission to create the collaborative performance from you to me to you. Her solo performance work, Medusa, combining poetry and visuals, was named an 'Outstanding Black Example' of British Live Art. In 2000 she was commissioned to write her first play, Fallout, which toured primary schools.

Her first poetry collection, Connecting Medium, was published in 2001, and contains many poems exploring her Barbadian heritage and her experience of growing up in London. The Caribbean Times describes her voice as one which 'coils up your feelings, around granite chips of truth ... unwinds solace, in the most soothing volleys.' Her second collection, Samboo's Grave/Bilal's Grave (2008) explores the history of Samboo, an African slave brought from the Caribbean to Lancaster and buried at Sunderland Point.

Dorothea Smartt is an experienced workshop leader, a former part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College and Leeds University, and one of the poetryclass team of poets. She regularly mentors aspiring poets and goes into London schools as a visiting or resident poet. She is poetry editor for SableLitMag, was visiting writer at Florida International University, and has given readings in countries including Hungary, Denmark, The Netherlands, Solvenia, Bahrain, USA, Egypt, and Jamaica.  Taken from https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/dorothea-smartt

  • Sister Netifa & The Determined Band, Storme Webber, Dorothea  Smartt, Leonora Rogers-Wright

    Sister Netifa & The Determined Band, Storme Webber, Dorothea Smartt, Leonora Rogers-Wright

    10 April 1992 at 
    Covent Garden Community Centre (182)
  • Black Women's Liberation Day

    Black Women's Liberation Day

    27 November 1992 at 
    Covent Garden Community Centre (182)
    Effectively the last date in Merle Collins’s Rotten Pomerack tour.
  • Carousel of Verse

    Carousel of Verse

    2 December 1994 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
    Three Women Poets intricately interweave slide images and text to create breathtaking performance pieces. Maya Chowdhry – Annandaa The Goddess of Food Dorothea Smartt – Medusa Bushy Kelly – From Dark to Light or a Case of Mistaken Identity
  • Wise, Wild & Wilful Women 2

    Wise, Wild & Wilful Women 2

    11 March 1995 at 
    Wheel (London - Camden) (1)
  • Massive

    Massive

    20 December 1995 at 
    Brixton Art Gallery (London - Lambeth) (1)
  • Motor Mouths

    Motor Mouths

    12 April 1996 at 
    CCA (Glasgow) (11)
    Presented by the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) and Cutting Teeth magazine, with the programming assistance of Apples & Snakes.
  • Tongues Untied - a celebration of the work of Essex Hemphill

    Tongues Untied - a celebration of the work of Essex Hemphill

    7 June 1996 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
    The screening of the film ‘Tongues Untied’ that celebrated and explored the multiplicity of Black Gay life in America.
  • International Women's Night

    International Women's Night

    7 March 1997 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Black History Month - October 1997

    Black History Month - October 1997

    11 October 1997 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Audio Visual - part of British Festival of Visual Theatre (1)

    Audio Visual - part of British Festival of Visual Theatre (1)

    23 October 1998 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Survival

    Survival

    3 December 1999 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Womanspeak

    Womanspeak

    3 March 2000 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Album of photos of www.applesandsnakes.org launch

    Album of photos of www.applesandsnakes.org launch

    19 January 2001
    A3 spiral-bound cuttings book containing 50 photos from www.applesandsnakes.org launch event at BAC, 19 Jan 2001. Running order for event sellotaped inside cover.
  • Dancing on White Sand

    Dancing on White Sand

    21 June 2002 at 
    Battersea Arts Centre (London - Wandsworth) (498)
  • Spaghetti Junction

    Spaghetti Junction

    7 October 2004 at 
    Poetry Café (5)
  • Apples & Snakes in Soho

    Apples & Snakes in Soho

    31 March 2010 at 
    Soho Theatre (64)
  • Ecstasies (Part of Pink Lime)

    Ecstasies (Part of Pink Lime)

    29 May 2014 at 
    Water Bar (Brighton) (1)
Latest comments
  • Bella on Contact usThe Spoken Word Archive is an amazing wealth of knowledge and history! It's so great to be able to track the progress of one's poetic heroes from grassroots to where they are now :) Thank you!
  • Fiona Marie on Lydia TomkiwThis is fascinating! It's sent me down an Algebra Suicide / Lydia Tomkiw researching wormhole.
Twitter
  • RT @VervePoetryFest: Tweets just can't contain ALL the splendid contents at the festival we have curated with @bbccslfest (8-11 SEP 2002) h…20 hours ago
  • What if you could grow your own state of mind? Ahead of the epic pop-up garden coming to #Birmingham from our fri… https://t.co/okM2NtSzPQ22 hours ago
Arts Council(opens in new window) Apples and Snakes(opens in new window) Heritage Lottery Fund(opens in new window)

Content released under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. Website by CommunitySites