January 18, 2023

‘Live Music Wednesdays’ is a part of college life at Elliott Hudson College, where students can sign up to perform live music in the lunchtime session on alternate Wednesdays. This week, however, we had something a little different and invited David Holmes, the Rebel Poet, to perform.

David Holmes is a local spoken word performer who performs around Leeds, as well as across the UK and Europe. He performed his poems, “1942,” “A License to Kill,” and “Turn That [TV] Off” which covered a range of topics from politics, current affairs, mental health, and the digital era.

Never one to preach, David’s poems deal with complicated and challenging topics, but always with the goal of being light-hearted and entertaining while making the audience think.

David shared how he first got into poetry: “I started just by doing it for myself, because I’ve always enjoyed words, reading and writing and when I was younger, my mum gave me a book by Spike Milligan that really inspired me – I enjoyed humorous stuff.”

Although he enjoyed writing, he only began performing around 10 years ago, after a friend encouraged him to start sharing some of his poetry:

“It was in about 2013. I was working as a roadie travelling with bands, and a friend of mine encouraged me to start performing some of the poetry I had been scribbling down. He said to me, ‘We’re doing a gig in Kirkstall, you’re on.’ And I said to him, ‘what do you mean ‘I’m on?’, ‘You’re performing some poetry’, and I laughed and said ‘no I’m not, I can’t.’ Anyway, I did it, and I performed four poems and a week later, he took me on a tour around Europe.

The second time I performed, they went mad for it; I got a buzz from it, so I just carried on. I carried on writing, and carried on performing and before I knew it, I was touring Europe every year.”

David’s journey into performing acts is a great example for students of how a hobby or interest that they have can be nurtured and grows over time, even if it isn’t something they would wish to pursue as a career right now.

“Most of our students and staff will never be exposed to spoken word or poetry like this, so when I saw David perform, I knew I wanted him to go into college and share his poetry with us.” Said Mrs Forryan, Subject Leader of Drama and Theatre Studies. “David was terrific, and the students loved him – it’s really great to be able to share this type of performative art at college as most people would never ordinarily be exposed to it any other way.”

David added by saying: “I loved performing for students at Elliott Hudson College, they are a great crowd and really good fun. I know a lot of the students here perform and listen to a lot of music, and I hope this opens their minds up a little bit and just exposes them to something a little different.”