My heart is a place where flowers grow

In 2011 Emma did the first solo show of her work ‘My heart is a place where flowers grow’ – a 50 minute set of her performance poetry and prose – at the Not Part Of Festival and Lassfest, Manchester and at Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe.

A review by Sarah Savage at Large Magazine, July 2011.

‘Poetry isn’t really my thing or I should probably say wasn’t because spoken word artist Emma Decent’s first solo show was thoroughly entertaining.  From Anglo Saxon kennings to the acutely observational and witty “Barbie,” who you’ve probably met in your local supermarket, Emma brings a sense of humour to the everyday which many of us fail to see.

Having travelled round the world in her father’s footsteps gaining the inspiration for the three part poem the “American Dream,” stopping off in Chicago along the way winning the famous Uptown Poetry Slam at the Green Mill with “Naked” and admitting if you want to get people’s attention a poem about sex is a good choice.  Then, there were the much more poignant and personal insights into her father’s death in “Dead Phone” and her mother’s dementia in “Mother’s Day”.

The longer character performance piece “Partner” explores what it means to admit that you need someone else and the expectations of society that women of a certain age should be married or in a relationship with children.

The poems themselves are beautifully crafted and thought provoking with a style of delivery so good that you cease to question the delivery itself.  There is a fearlessness and insightfulness in the choice of subject matter in which everyone can find something to relate to.

The performance finished with an excerpt from a piece currently in development called “Beyond Dreams of Aberystwyth” and I for one want to go back and see the end result.’

‘My heart is a place where flowers grow’ at An Outlet, 1 July 2011, Not Part Of Festival.

Link to Review