‘Art is a form of protest that leaves no blood’: Zambian poet puts African voices on the spoken-word stage

‘I wanted to tell my truth’: Vanessa Chisakula wrote her first spoken word poem in her early 20s and ‘didn’t want to stop’. Photograph: Courtesy of Vanessa Chisakula

After giving birth, Vanessa Chisakula started writing poetry as a way of processing the changes and struggles she was experiencing as a new mother. “I was in my early 20s. I had just become a mum and didn’t understand it,” she says.

“I had all these questions,” she says. “What is a woman? Is this it? I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing.”