Chay Graham, or MC Shakes as he’s known on stage, is a first year NatSci at Magdalene and a spoken word artist of inimitable wit. He recently stormed a college concert with a mixture of raps, poems and songs about his friends and hometown with unforgettable lyrics such as “paper chains of favourite people I itch to introduce, I want to see them mix together like my favourite cocktail juice.”

How did you first get involved with performance poetry?

I used to rhyme at school with my friends – we’ve always loved rap culture. Now and then in the playground someone would bust a rhyme, and it would snowball into hilarity. I got involved with the youth version of a project called ‘Poets versus MCs’. It started when some rappers were performing in a Brighton pub. Some local poets in the audience accused them of being rubbish, and started lyrically dissing them with a variety of poems that they penned on the spot. By this time the pub had packed out with everyone watching. The poets won the battle but agreed to a rematch. Next thing it had turned into an annual show. The performances are fierce.

The audience got quite involved in your performance – you had us doing a Mexican wave at one point. Is the audience an important part of your poetry?

Yes! Coming to it through a community project and being part of a rap collective, rather than a solo performer, made me a lot more aware of connection. Our poetry works best when it’s spoken. Being a writer or a performer have different meanings to me.

What do you think is the difference between a writer and a performer?

You might not write something for it to be read; you might just write to clarify your thoughts, or to develop an idea in two-dimensional space. Performance, on the other hand, inherently starts at communication – it’s not writing in the same way because, for me, the way I think about the audience affects the writing process. There’s a symbiosis between them. I think: “What would someone think listening to this word choice?” rather than: “This word sounds better here to me.” I think about what I am telling someone and what it would mean to them.

Who inspires you to write?

All the members of ‘Poets vs. MCs’! The reactions of my friends, family, teachers and fans provide me with the fuel for writing. If you and your mates all write poetry and share it with each other then you can make it real, make it happen. Most poetry isn’t published. It’s shared between mates on a late night, on the beach, and in the kitchen at parties. It doesn’t need to be a big thing with the stage and the bright lights. I’d be just as comfortable reading something to a friend as I would be playing to the world.

Have you heard much of the spoken word scene in Cambridge?

Hammer & Tongue looks pretty booming.

Do you think spoken word is a victim of prejudice?

Totally. I think spoken word is treated abysmally by the media. There’s an over-emphasis on dead poets being the best poets. The best poets probably live on your street, but don’t read their poetry aloud! I think it’s something that you’re taught to read about and consider and every now and then a newspaper will claim that poetry is the new rock and roll and there’ll be some figurehead who’s managed to write some ‘proper’ poetry and they’ll pin all their hopes on them to bring it back and to make it contemporary but, in the process, that destroys whatever the person’s trying to say. When I started sharing it, friends and family began coming up to me and confessing their own poetry! Before, if you mentioned ‘poetry’ in a conversation to someone, they’d think GCSE English. But then, wham, it wasn’t GCSE English, it was all of us, as people – we were the poets. Living storytellers. We weren’t dead poets being studied. We were alive, writing poetry and sharing it, and it was just wicked.

If I asked you to recommend me a poem…
Anything by Salena Godden (‘I’m Gonna Move To Hastings’), Michael James Parker (‘Charm’), Rosy Carrick (‘Chokey’) and Gramski (‘British Girls in Bangkok’).

Finally, do you have any favourite words?

‘Serendipity’ ‘cracko’ ‘lenticular’ ‘boisterous’ ‘bun’ ‘loloolol’ (said with an ‘oo’ in the middle) ‘mate’ ‘whatever’ ‘minger’ ‘monger’ ‘skying a drink’ ‘bounce’ ‘buff’ ‘piff’ ‘bruv’ ‘ocular’ ‘stars’ ‘magic’ ‘neologism’ and I love rhymes you can slam the rhyme hammer with! For example, ‘cinematic’ and ‘systematic’ or ‘lightning’ and ‘frightening’. I could go on all day (and sometimes I hang out with other word-lovers and we do!). I love words that rhyme with themselves, like ‘humdrum’ and ‘condom’. Also, science has some great words like ‘thermoacidophile’ and ‘autolithochemotrophic.’ I like the Spanish word ‘¿Que?’ and the French word ‘fromage’ and the Italian word ‘spaccare’ and the Japanese word ‘chokorēto’ and I hope as long as I live I keep hearing new words.