More Mixed Messages by Mark 'Mr T' Thompson

More Mixed Messages is courageous, unflinching, authentic, informed and indefatigable. Mark doesn’t look away, or speak in whispers. The work sits well in the rich vein of protest poetry; confronting the reader and society with visceral truths wrapped in humour and righteous anger.

Mark compels the reader to the centre of the most heightened moments, to inhabit the hard questions about themselves, about life, about society; to hear the words as they read, to feel them as they’re heard. Asserting the questions: Am I in or out of the system? What am I made of? Do I contribute to this? If not me, then who?

More Mixed Messages reminds us of the storytellers and activists who have spoken through the ages - the affairs of state are affairs of the people. Yes, the people must have a voice and their injustices will be heard.

Poet, performer, educator, Mark Thompson trained at Rose Bruford College in Theatre. Retraining as a Drama teacher at Goldsmiths College in 2004. He’s still acting and teaching while performing his poetry and facilitating workshops on culture, identity and poetics.
 
Featured on Radio 4, BBC Radio London, Jazz FM and Choice FM, his commissions include work with The Royal Maritime Museum, the charities The ACLT and Crisis, as well as BBC Radio Four, for whom he crafted a suite of poems for ‘Lights Out: From the Ashes of New Cross’ in 2020.
 
In print he has featured in the Morning Star and three anthologies since 2020; Poets Against Trump, Football is Poetry and Poetry is our Protest - a collaboration with Spoken with whom he also contributed to a poetry exchange with Born Lippy in Newcastle in 2021.
 
Mark hosted local Black Lives Matter events in 2020 and contributed poetry to commemorations of ‘The Battle of Lewishham’ and the New Cross fire, helping to immortalise local moments in Black British history.

With a children’s picture book in development, poetry workshops for East Side Educational Trust and contributing to a transatlantic webinar with Digital Theatre+ on the history of Black poetry in English, there’s been a lot going on!
 
‘Philosophers can keep interpreting the world, it’s us who needs to change it!’