Rae Leviné responds to London’s knife crime with heartfelt poem ‘Black Kings’

When times are tough some choose escapism, oth­ers choose engage­ment. South London’s Rae Lev­iné is grace­ful­ly walk­ing the line between both with her stim­u­lat­ing spo­ken word poetry.

In her lat­est audio poem, ‘Black Kings’, Lev­iné returns to the sub­ject of vio­lence among London’s black youth.

“That bul­let or knife wound is a mother’s bro­ken pray / A mother’s worst night­mare / You can’t trust the sys­tem… Yet we can’t trust our own / These stab­bings are like a viral infec­tion,” she says.

And fur­ther on: “You can­not scream the words, ‘black lives mat­ter’, and then stab one of your own / See then, those words they become scat­tered / They no longer stick an hold its own, because you killed anoth­er king who nev­er made it home.”

Lis­ten to Leviné’s poem below.

Leviné’s recent work includes her pow­er­ful anti-gun poem ‘Guns Talk Too Much Part 2’, and the sen­su­al ‘Women’s Talk’.

Find Lev­iné on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.

Image: cour­tesy of Rae Leviné