Yomi Ṣode: The Hatching

Yomi Ṣode brings The Hatching to the Schwarzman Centre on Tuesday 3 November, a new experimental spoken word performance that runs for an hour. It's built in three parts — Ou Topos (no place), Eu Topos (good place), and The Custodians — and works its way through belonging, identity, and responsibility, and what it means to be born into systems you didn't choose, drawing on law, media, and politics. Ṣode pulls from his poetry collection Manorism alongside new work, and Candice Carty-Williams once called him 'a beautiful storyteller'.

It's an interactive show, so you're not just sitting and listening. Ṣode is directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, with a soundscape and live underscore from DJ Rewyld, and guest poets and performers Jerome Scott, Rae Zoe, and Noah Ṣode joining in. The whole thing sits within Utopia Now!, a season looking at the role of the arts in making a better future possible.

As for the venue, the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities is a major new landmark in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, bringing together the University's seven humanities faculties. It's built as both an academic engine room and a civic-facing arts venue open to the public, with a 500-seat concert hall, a theatre, a black-box space, a cinema, and exhibition galleries. The Hatching is in the theatre.

It starts at 19:00 and runs for an hour, with tickets at £16.34. The centre is at Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6GG.