Like to create your own #AccelerateAction poem for the world?
Annually, International Women's Day (IWD) provides an exciting opportunity for women creatives worldwide to showcase their support for gender equality.
Spoken word poetry is an impactful art form that can help forge awareness about women's rights through delivering important messages that can inspire change.
Rallying communities through spoken word poetry
Sharena Lee Satti is a highly talented and accomplished spoken word poet, and steps forward to rally her community to Accelerate Action, and encourage further creatives and poets to share their own pieces.
Advocating for women and championing artists
A poet, spoken word artist, educator, festival producer, and workshop facilitator, Sharena is an advocate for women, pushing the boundaries and campaigning for their voices to be heard in society. Residing in the UK but harnessing a significant global community of advocates, Sharena's real and raw poetry draws upon her own life experiences, struggles, cultural identity, and upbringing to help influence change in the lives of others.
Championing grassroots artists, Sharena encourages their development. Sharena is also a real advocate for encouraging poetry and passionately supporting all forms of art in her, Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK, and beyond. Sharena believes in the power of poetry and works extremely hard within her community and online to ensure that poetry is accessible for all.
Sharena respectfully and authentically addresses themes that can be difficult to talk about but which express a genuine vulnerability that creates the opportunity for others to also accept and address their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
An accomplished published poet
Sharena's second collection Shhhhh was published on National Poetry Day by award-winning publishing company Verve Poetry Press. Sharena was instrumental in delivering the first ever West Yorkshire Poetry Week in collaboration with the National Literacy Trust. Sharena invites local poets to take part in a week of vital poetry workshops across the county, inspiring the next generation of writers. Sharena's impactful poetry is widely featured, for example in Unbound's 100 Voices, 100 Women Share Their Stories of Achievement.
Locally, Sharena is a well-known figure in the UK's thriving Bradford cultural scene. She has been celebrated as a Bradford Yorkshire Champion and lauded as one of 21 people selected in 2021 making a significant impact on Bradford’s cultural scene. A UK National Diversity Award nominee, Sharena also dabbles in radio presenting. Sharena was announced as a ChangeMaker by The Leap, a creative people and places program focusing on community-led culture. Sharena is also the founder of non-profit community-based organization, Spoke, that works to raise the profile of spoken word and poetry. Spoke brings together emerging and established poets and performance artists to reach new people and places with poetry and spoken word - delivering spoken word workshops in various settings across education, rehabilitation, and corporate sectors. Spoke also hosts poetry and spoken-word events throughout the year and offer open-mic events that provide people with an opportunity to showcase their work in a safe space – running non-profit events in a nomadic style - from different locations.
Enjoy Sharena Lee Satti's incredible work, such as her Accelerate Action poem below, and reach out to her for performances, commissions, workshops, and more.
Accelerate Action - a poem by Sharena Lee Satti
When will the Awareness be the Action
If the soul carrier, the child bearers of the earth stopped giving birth
Who would be here to run the world, spinning the blue core of the universe
Who would be here to action the actions that never get actioned the deadly silence
Who would be here to plea for inequality of the Woman of the Girl
If no child was planted in the Uterus of the Universe
Would that change how a woman is seen, treated and bleeds
Would she become sacred, would her body become a shrine
That gender violence destroys because she is seen on earth
As the most high.
Do you still not see the urgency
During the pandemic, she felt the hardship of its sacrifice
Through its disproportion, its burden was a test of her life
and the loss was a loss, seeking shelter she had to find
but where was the arms of recovery for the mountains she had to climb
When will the urgency be urgent enough for you to notice
That your ignorance is a crime
How many times can we scream in hope to be seen but then muted, doors slammed, manuscripts closed, subjected because of her clothes, how she walks, talks blinks how she thinks
How many protests, road blockages, voices screaming
Will it take for actions to be actioned amongst the self-sabotage of your hearing
When will the workplace whispers create legal policy documentation
When will government officials declare we no longer have to fight as women for the equality rights we are chasing
How many more stories can be written that we need to be saved in
Always the damsel in distress, the mistress, the witch burnt at the stake
When will society see women as the guardians of heavens gate
When will you action your awareness, even she, the full moon Luna
Moves the dramatic waves of the tide
When will you humans open your eyes
We don’t need your voices echoed on TV screens
Or your words dancing amongst coloured ink
That sits within the pages of a magazine
that neatly cut fingernails flick through
Yet the content is blindly seen
because it doesn't scream within the corridors
Of their mind
It doesn't sit within their policies or shoulders of pride
It stays within the pages you don’t see, and the action are never followed up
Because we are never treated equally
When will the urgency be seen
How long do we have to scream for you to see
The damage of gender inequality
How some are forced to be caged by their fear
Gender-based Violence is silenced by the Silent
The ignorance of the noise, of bold actions that need more than your voice
For the urgency of change
When will words become movement than the stillness of the page
When will awareness be the action the movement of the brave
"Thank you to all our Sisterhood sisters for participating," says Sharena as with deep gratitude she names her colleagues: Bradford Phab Club members, Linda, Dionne, Lauren, Beth, Abda, Courtney, Javaira, Jodie, Rubina, Saima, Ella, Fiona, and Sisterverse Members."
Share your IWD spoken word message
So what's your #AccelerateAction spoken word message for International Women's Day 2024?
Send in your own #AccelerateAction creation, so it may be promoted worldwide as part of the collective unity that is IWD.
Show solidarity for International Women's Day and create your own #AccelerateAction spoken word poem and share it on social media using the hashtags: #IWD2025 #AccelerateAction #IWDpoetry​ - and feel free to send in your spoken word creation for potential inclusion on the IWD website and social media channels.
The world awaits your voice!