Name: Word Wise #84 Helen Rice and Shareefa Energy
Start: 2025-01-31T19:30:00+00:00
End: 2025-01-31T22:30:00+00:00
Location: Dubrek Studios, 67 Bridge Street, de1 3lb Derby, United Kingdom

Word Wise is a spoken word and poetry night uniting the best talent from around the UK and beyond, with Derby's finest performers. Word Wise won the 2019 Saboteur award for Best Regular Spoken Word Event in the UK.
£3 Early bird tickets (plus booking fee) £5 on the door.
Helen Rice is a writer and performer based in Sheffield. She was born and raised in
Derby, where most of her family still lives. She first encountered the poetry live scene at Wordwise in 2018 and was instantly hooked. In 2019, she was one of six poets chosen
for the Wise Talk spoken word development programme funded by Arts Council England. Helen won Leeds Poetry Festival Competition in 2022 and her debut poetry pamphlet
‘I’m Not Your Mother’ was published by Written Off in 2024. She has also recently been featured in two anthologies: ‘Ey Up 3’ - an anthology of Northern writing published by Written Off and Chapel FM’s ‘Recovery’. Helen’s creative output spans the worlds of poetry, comedy, music and theatre.
You can find more information on her website: www.helenriceisshowingoff.com
Shareefa Energy is a working class poet, performer, writer, author, activist, educator, creative campaigner, workshop facilitator, arts and wellbeing practitioner and community organiser of Indian and Muslim heritage from Leicester and London. She is the author of poetry collection Galaxy Walk, endorsed by the late Benjamin Zephaniah. Her poetry is raw, honest and consistent against injustice, exploring themes on the diaspora experience, institutional racism, classism, police violence, womanhood. She received the UK Entertainment Best Poet 2017 Award, a nominee for the Muslim Women Arts & Entertainment Awards 2021 and for the Eastern Eye Arts, Culture & Theatre 2019 award by the Arts Council.
Her poetry has featured on BBC The One Show, Channel 4 and ITV. She has facilitated creative writing, poetry, storytelling and performance workshops internationally, from Trinidad, Palestine to Sierra Leone with schools, universities, academics, in immigration detention centres, prisons, with survivors of domestic violence and with those impacted by state violence.