Full disclosure. Don’t have a telly, never seen Strictly Come Dancing : often walk across Tottenham Marshes.

Rose & Giovanni have risen up through audible visibility in virtue their recent performance on #Strictly included moves danced in silence, reflecting Rose Ayling-Ellis’ sound world. Watch them swoon here.

Giovanni Rose, a seventeen year old poet has just won The Foyles Young Poet of the year Award for his Welcome to Tottenham, a powerful reflection of what it means to be young, gifted, black and trying to survive in an ethnically diverse patch of North London. Watch him perform it here

It seems more than a co-incidence of name that three people are beamed to the forefront of consciousness at the same moment. Sometimes it seems the universe spins in such a way as to compel us to Listen.

Both dancers and poet express their message quietly which seems more powerful than bellowing. In such explosive times as these, it’s wonderful to remember volume holds less importance than meaning and it is often the suasive approach that endures.

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