Come and support the #PoetWithPunch as #MatmanReturns to Dudley, this time at The Venue, for my 2nd professional fight on Friday the 4th of March.
Everyone that purchases a ticket from me shall receive a FREE ‘Matmask’ to wear as I make my ring entrance.
It really would be great to have your support so please feel free to get in touch and become a part of #TheMatmanTeam .
You can listen to me live on 95.6fm BBC WM tomorrow morning between 7.30 and 8am as I share my opinion on Tyson Fury’s upset victory over Wladimir Klitschko.
Who knows, we may even talk about #MatmanBegins, my professional debut this coming Saturday at Dudley Town Hall as well.
Tune in! #PoetWithPunch.
COMPETITION TIME.
Fancy performing one of your poems, raps or stories on the radio and shadowing me for an afternoon of paid work on my ‘Poetry with Punch’ workshops?
Then all you have to do is write around the theme of ‘My place.’
Follow the link to find out how to enter.
The competition closes on Friday the 4th of December.
Good luck! #PoetWithPunch
People often think – ‘lift weights, get big’ and of course that’s not wrong but lift weight to lose weight? It almost sounds contradictory but this oxymoron has worked for me.
Over the past 12 months my coach has added Olympic weightlifting to my training regime and it’s benefited me for a number of different reasons.
Not only has my power and strength increased but it has also helped me lose the weight that I need to shift in order for me to fight. As well as keeping my day to day training schedule fresh and exciting.
So the next time you’re looking at including something new to your training dairy, maybe the Snatch, Jerk and Squat could be for you! #PoetWithPunch
Seeing as though today is ‘Back to the future day’ I thought that I’d share my ‘schools of the future’ poem with you.
I was just 17 when I wrote this so please do excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes :*.
Enjoy. #PoetWithPunch.
A spontaneous ‘Poetry with Punch’ workshop occurred recently when I arrived at Montgomery primary school for my usual poetry session only to be told that their schedule had changed and that they now had PE all morning.
The teacher asked if I fancied ‘rolling with the punches’ to do a heavyweight version of our boxercise class.
Never one to back down from a fight…I mean challenge, I agreed to dust the gloves off and get to it.
We started warming the body up with some fun games that they wouldn’t necessarily notice was boxing related. (A little bit like Mr Miyagi’s ‘wax on, wax off’ routine.)
We worked on the basics of boxing;
Stance,hand positioning, footwork, rhythm and straight punches.
Once I felt that they had that down to a satisfactory level we rotated 30 children, each in 3 groups of 10, between boxers skipping, partner pad work and tag boxing.
Upon the conclusion of our martial art form, we all trotted off back upstairs to study a different type of art… poetry!
#PoetWithPunch #BrainAndBrawn #PhysicalAndMental
I was so fortunate to be contacted by the Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, about having me in for a weeks work of poetry performances, workshops and boxercise sessions.
Two weeks after agreeing dates, the flights were booked and I headed off on my 23 hour journey to the other side of the world to do what I love for a living.
I landed on the Sunday and was up for work at 5.30am Monday morning. Of course, jet-lagged and tired I still couldn’t wait to get the week underway!
So Monday started with two, one hour performances with year 9 & 6 and then finished the rest of the day by helping the year 6 students write their own poetry in preparation for their poetry slam on Wednesday.
Working with just under 300 students on the first day alone, I was buzzing for the rest of the week.
My second of five working days in Kuala Lumpur began with 3×1 hour poetry workshops with year 6 and finished with a 2 hour boxercise session with the teachers!!!
They were some big lumps… now I know why the students are so well behaved.
The year 6’s were writing around the theme of ‘It’s good to be me’ and one group decided to get all street and ghetto with their poetry/rap chorus; …
‘Mic check, one, two, three
Yo, yo, it’s good to be me!’
Tomorrow they’ll be performing their poems in front of the whole year group as part of the poetry slam!
Year 7 were my visitors for Wednesday mornings assembly. Performing & freestyling for them along with answering any questions that they had.
I asked 10 students to think of 10 words that they thought I couldn’t rhyme with so that I could attempt to perform a freestyle poem, on the spot, rhyming (or half rhyming) with the words that they had given me. They came up with;
Hypothermia
Orange
Rhythm
Onomatopoeia
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Dolphin
Hyperbole
Music
Exit &
Grotesque.
Thankfully I managed to see the poem through to the end and the freestyle lines looked a little something like this…
I think it’s fair to say that they were impressed.
The day concluded with the year 6 poetry slam final with each of the winning participants receiving the Birmingham Young Poets Laureate book – ‘My dream.’
All 14 teams were amazing and they wrote, practised and performed their poems in a very short space of time.
The winning performance can be found here…
Thursday was a national holiday in KL so I got the chance to check out the sights and hit the town.
Friday, my final day, produced a last session selfie after 4×1 hour performances to end my week in Kuala Lumpur.
I was sad to be leaving but I had an amazing day to top off a fantastic week.
One of the students even said to the head of English – ‘Sir, he’s the best speaker that we’ve ever had.’ …
Which was just ❤.
Hopefully I’ll be back again in the future but for now, thank you Garden International for inviting me to your school! Xx
A HUGE thank you must also go to Miss Siobhan, the school librarian, for looking after me all week and ensuring that my transition from class to class was smooth and easy.
It was a pleasure to meet her, as well as the rest of the staff, and I’d like to think that I’ll be back over there again in the future. X. #PoetWithPunch
Here is my first ever interview with Kugan Cassius from iFILM LONDON TV.
We’re talking boxing, poetry and professional debut.
Please click the link to watch.
#PoetWithPunch
For years and years people have said to me ‘A poet and a boxer? What an odd combination.’
So I’ve decided to do just that – combine them!
I always looked at myself as a ‘poet by day, boxer by night’ but over the past 12 months I have been taking my boxing knowhow in to my poetry workshops (when requested.)
As a former Young Poet Laureate of Birmingham and a qualified Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) boxing coach the main purpose of bringing these two contrasting art forms together is to help break stereotypes, install discipline and build confidence. So the first 3 (ish) hours of the day are dedicated to writing poetry, rhyming and performance like any of my usual workshops. The final hour or two after lunch however is dedicated to boxing. I run a Boxercise session with the class and teach them the basics and fundamentals of boxing whilst always drawing comparisons from the mornings poetry session such as rhythm, repetition and juxtaposition.
If you would like a more in depth discussion about this workshop or if you believe that something like this would be beneficial for your class then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Testimonials will be added soon!
Saturday the 21st I’m back at the Birmingham Library Theatre in town having the privilege of introducing MOBO award winning rap star AKALA. It starts at 5pm (so get there just before) and it will finish at 6pm. So just come and chill for an hour or so. I hope to see you there!
Matt Windle 