Slough poet ‘grateful and honoured’ as first book shortlisted for prestigious prize

A poet shortlisted for a prestigious prize says ‘Slough is fundamental’ to her identity and writing.

Desree was drawn to the stage personas of poets who ‘play on the musicality of poetry’ and launched an open mic night in the town in 2014, which ‘fostered’ her love of spoken word.

“I think there's something musical and rhythmic about spoken word that I was immediately drawn to,” she told the Express.

“When I was young, I used to write stories. As I got older, I was writing music, writing raps, and it turned into spoken word, so it evolved and changed and took different shapes as I grew up.”

The 33-year-old grew up in Britwell and is an artist in residence for the poetry collective EMPOWORD, which meets every month at the Queensmere Shopping Centre.

Also being a playwright – bringing the stage adaptation of The Comet to The Curve this December – Desree said spoken word ‘amalgamates’ her interests into one specific form.

“I loved writing and I loved plays and I loved poetry, I loved rhyming and music, it felt like all of my favourite things drilled into one,” she said.

Altar is Desree’s first collection of published poetry, which explores the resilience of youth, the strength of the Black female body, the complexity of chosen and unchosen family, and the sweeping effects of gentrification.

“It also looks at queerness, but also Black joy. It's got lots of different avenues, but they all revolve around place and growing up - a lot of it is about Slough as well,” she added.

Desree started writing a version nearly seven years ago, and the collection has taken ‘lots of different shapes’ and become ‘lots of different things' since then.

"It's gone through a lot of editors and I've felt really honoured to be able to spend this much time with a piece of work," she said.

Desree said Slough is 'fundamental to who I am as a person but also as a writer' and quoted the excerpt from her book: “Darling Slough, I love you like rain."

"It's the idea of loving a place but being able to see the stressful and gritty parts of it, but also still loving it and still wanting the best for it," she said.

“Who I am fundamentally and the way that I write wouldn't exist without where I've come from.

"It's influenced my idea of place, my idea of fairness and the joy that you can have in survival."

Desree has received the Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2025 and is among 20 poets shortlisted for the 2025 Forward Prizes for Poetry in September.

The coveted and influential prizes have recognised big names in poetry, including Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Carol Ann Duffy, and Desree is among four poets shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection.

She is ‘grateful and honoured’ to be part of the list but knows there are many ‘incredible’ poets who aren’t recognised because spoken word is ‘slightly outside of the [box]’.

“I'm really grateful I get to work in and around and for different parts of the community,” she added.

“I find a lot of joy and a lot of honour in that."

Desree also hopes that poetry becomes more accessible and ‘opens a new world’ of how people write, engage and change ideas by expanding the number of creatives who ‘look like me’ or come from 'the same place as me’.

“When I was young, if you had told me when I was in secondary school that I was going to be a poet when I grew up, I wouldn't have believed you," she added.

"It felt so out of reach and outside of my wheelhouse that it felt like it wasn't even something I could dream about.

"It's not necessarily just about creating another generation of poets, which obviously I'd love to do, but it's also about being able to see a world beyond that includes you." 

The 2025 Forward Prizes for Poetry winners will be announced in a ceremony as part of the London Literature Festival on Sunday, October 26.