In a special series for Huffington Post UK Culture, some of the country's finest performance poets have recorded exclusive end of year messages. You can read a copy of Nadia's poem below.
Nadia Khomami, 22
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How long have you been performing poety?
I got into poetry performances and readings about two years ago.
What is your poem about?
All those in society brushed under the carpet. Most of the time, they're exactly the same as us, just in different circumstances. Yet they're branded as monsters, broken, mindless, depressed, addicted. It's about something we all feel at times: not being listened to, not being able to express yourself, and generally feeling down and out in a city that can get the best of you at the worst of times.
Who is your favourite poet, and poem?
It's hard to pick a favourite poet, or poem for that matter. I'm influenced by such a variety of different poets. I guess if I had to choose, the dime would fall somewhere in between TS Eliot, Rimbaud, Blake, Oscar Wilde, Bukowski and Frank O'Hara.
Where can we see you perform?
I perform in many places around the city. Usually in pubs and bars on acoustic nights. Sometimes theatres. I'm a member of the Barbican Young Poets, we have a showcase each year the Barbican sometime around March.
What will you be doing this Christmas?
Attempting to express all my mal du siecles in under 144 characters.
All Hallow's
Drunk, lulled and restless I had drifted
Beneath a silent, idle sky, I sat and
Watched the night glide by with all its droll and
Dark delights.
But who would have thought that one night
I might have bumped into my end,
Into the barren fleets that hide
Within the crooked streets
Of lonely London's eastern end?
Who would have thought, that with leaking,
Worn out slack-jaws, their pale and creaking joints
And aches and the buds of my
Wine-stained mistakes would come
To suitably join laws. They said,
We are the moans that arise at dusk from that
Whore, that bitch, that London that screams,
That holy city that not once did pity the songs
We let loose into its streams, we are those that lie
Within its furies, deep, lost from excess of lust or lack
Of love and sleep,
Who here cares for our dead souls?
And I saw the tears that
Channel down the faces of all
These mad men of the street, and I felt the
Panic, the dread alarm of what happened
When their eyes and mine did meet.
My eyes that tore the mute sky apart, and all
My world that was sucked up into its heart, in
That splendid languor I finally did see
The brightest of all eternity, it put to bed battles
Between the drink in me, and all the dreams that
Did once sink in me.
I shouted all you of love,
And all you of warmness, you that screen
And point behind your harness,
Board up your windows, your children need not
See all this trembling cold, and colder fear
Set free. Save the children, just
Save them all. And
In the undertow, were we then caught,
The grim and grotty dwellers of your fright, went
Rolling on down saint Arthur's street and
Plunging into a bottomless night,
Swept up off your pavements and off your
dawnings, off your bright and clear
Cut winter mornings.
We the scabs, the stabs, the sex and silent specks
Of distant stars, we the perverts,
Prostitutes and punch, the louder, loudest
And hardest bunch of fiends you'll
Ever meet,
We that forage, we the national debt, we
The hate and grubby brushed off dirt, the
Unruly cowards, the barbarians, the banished
And accursed,
Who here cares for our dead souls?
Drunk, lulled and restless I had drifted
Beneath a silent, idle sky, I sat and
Watched the night glide by with all its droll and
Dark delights.
But who would have thought that one night
I might have bumped into my end,
Into the barren fleets that hide
Within the crooked streets
Of lonely London's eastern end?
Now I am that moan that arises at dusk, from
That whore, that bitch, that London that screams, the
Holy city that not once does pity the songs
I let loose into its streams.
Who here cares for my dead soul?