Poems on Gender

STORY

The world’s oldest free speech platform, Speakers’ Corner once echoed with the voices of Karl Marx, George Orwell and Marcus Garvey. On a quiet morning in 2025, a poet mounts a soapbox to deliver forty minutes of intense, thoughtful poetry on sex, gender and revolution. Gender is a controversial and even dangerous topic today. All the more reason for each of us to speak about it with honesty, heart and intelligence.

“Poems on Gender” was censored by New York’s Frigid Festival despite a positive reception in the UK and an anti-capitalist message critical of gender norms. To address the controversy and the issues it raises, the Sunday matinee will be followed by an open conversation about censorship in the arts, with the London-based poet attending remotely.

BIO

David Lee Morgan (writer): Born in Berlin, grown in and around Seattle, for the last 30 years David Lee Morgan has been based in London, travelling the northern hemisphere as a performance poet and street musician (saxophone). He has written novels, plays and musical theatre. He’s won a fair few slam poetry competitions, including the London, the UK, and the BBC Slam Championships. He holds a PhD in creative writing and philosophy at Newcastle University. He’s a longstanding member of the Writers Guild of Great Britain. For books and videos visit davidword.com.

Thoeger Hansen (performer): Thoeger got his start as a professional actor in 2004 and has been working steadily since 2011 in independent films, cable TV, and off-off-Broadway. In 2019, Joshua Crone cast Thoeger as Tom Petty in the world premiere of his psychedelic comedy The Journey at The Tank. Since then the two have collaborated on various projects, including the 2021 feature film Black Box, the September 2023 revival of The Journey at The Bike, and the April 2024 production of An Enemy of the People. Thoeger’s directing debut marks the New York premiere of Crone’s play A House Divided.