Barbican Young Poets 2019-20

Tice Cin and Gboyega Odubanjo
'two mates on a bus playing each other tunes'

Photo by Christy Ku

Photo by Christy Ku

Listen

two mates on a bus playing each other tunes

(Tice plays: Oscar #worldpeace - Tate Modern + Wary + Pearls)

Both of me first and next mainly me.

A notification like an adventitious root

rejected for the transaction it recalls.

The redistribution of revenge porn as selfie.

(Gboyega plays: Moses Boyd - Rush Hour/Elegua (feat. Kevin Haynes Grupo Elegua))

everybody going gone

people packed went

outskirts and elsewhere.

sound been bagged

aerial come down

music plucked from sky

and scattered.

tower come down.

lives in matted

woven nylon zipped

uncle cousin

gone. bass in back-

packs. trunk rattle hushed.

couldn’t no centre ever

hold all that racket, no.

(Tice plays Skepta - Oynama Sikidim Sikidim)

To the re-DVD-ing of me and mine.

Mine that is no longer the us of their plans.

We stash our pockets Blockchain.

We pile-up of things, bread breading

bread falling off a conveyor belt

everyone in Lidl getting stressed, that's me.

Catch me again intermittent unexpected.

Nothing tell-tale no give away.

Yes I transform to disappear.

Benching in on myself nothing here to see if there’s so much of it.

Youtube suggests another video

(Gboyega plays Lex Amor - Plant Your Feet (P.Y.F))

woman on the 67 bus

with the stories

she’s gone.

estate scrubbed clean

of its grimy self.

loiter song gagged.

gap-toothed whistle

no more. song not ever.

pastor on the corner

mistakes empty for heaven

communion run empty

no two or more gathered

no bodies here

only ghosts

and memory holding

this nothing

and nobody place up.

About Tice Cin

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from North London. A Literary Fiction awardee for Spread the Word’s London Writers Awards, her novel Keeping the House will be published by And Other Stories in September. Also a music producer and DJ, Cin is currently putting together her debut EP. Her work has been commissioned by venues including Battersea Arts Centre and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and she now creates digital art as part of Design Yourself, a collective based at Barbican Centre, exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything.

Instagram: @tice.cin

About Gboyega Odubanjo

Gboyega Odubanjo was born and raised in East London. He is the author of While I Yet Live (Bad Betty Press, 2019) and Aunty Uncle Poems (The Poetry Business, June 2021). Gboyega is an editor of bath magg.

Twitter: @OdubanjoGboyega