Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different

Poems from Malika's Poetry Kitchen

Malika's Poetry Kitchen author Rishi Dastidar editor Maisie Lawrence editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Little, Brown Book Group

Published:5th Aug '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different cover

One of the Evening Standard'sBest Non-fiction 2021.

'We knew that black and brown bodies, working class voices, women's voices, did not have a space where they could be heard - and so this writing collective was a necessary and political act'

In the early years of the new millennium, poets Malika Booker and Roger Robinson saw the need for a space for writers outside of the establishment to grow, improve, discuss and learn. One Friday night, Malika offered her Brixton kitchen table as a meeting place. And so Malika's Poetry Kitchen was born.

'Kitchen', as it became known, has ushered in a new generation of voices, launching some of the most exciting writers, books and initiatives in British poetry in the past twenty years. Today, Kitchen is a thriving writers' collective, with a wealth of talented poets and branches in Chicago and India.

Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different is a celebration of Kitchen's legacy, an appreciation of its foundational spirit and a rallying cry for all writers to dream the future. The collection features breathtaking new poems by Warsan Shire, Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi, Dean Atta, Roger Robinson, Malika Booker among many others.

This magnificent book is a celebration of community, collectivism, reading, rereading, learning, talking, thinking, drafting and redrafting. Above all it's a song of praise to the power of poetry to remind us who we are and who we can become -- Ian McMillan
A critical and urgent moment . . . Malika's Kitchen is as much a gift to poets of colour in the UK as it is a gift to British poetry . . . this anthology is a loud proclamation of the aesthetic value of embracing difference -- Kwame Dawes
Like the best kitchens, Malika's fills and satisfies with a mixture of the raw and the sizzling. The tastes are new, the fusion is fun and the heat is transformative -- Samuel West
For two decades now, British poetry has been flavoured by the products of Malika's Kitchen. Without that Kitchen we would have been blander; we would not have understood as deeply, how much craft and urgency and ambition belong in the same pot. Gather now at this most important table. Sit. Feast. -- Kei Miller

ISBN: 9781472155061

Dimensions: 198mm x 152mm x 14mm

Weight: 180g

144 pages