Connor Allen on poetry, home, and creativity as he looks to help the next generation of poets

"Hammond Drive just off Cromwell Road/Is where my story first got told/ Acting bigger than big and dreaming bold.”

So begins “Hammond Drive”, the opening poem in Dominoes, writer, actor and performer Connor Allen’s first poetry collection for adults, just out from Cardiff-based indie publisher Lucent Dreaming. Hot on its heels in May and from the same publisher comes Miracles, his first collection for children. Alongside Allen’s own poems, it includes work by some of the young people he has inspired to get writing during his time as Children’s Laureate Wales.

These two poetry collections are only the latest landmarks in Allen’s flourishing artistic career. Now aged 30, he succeeded Eloise Williams as Children’s Laureate in 2021; the second writer, and the first of colour to hold the post. In 2022, alongside his wide-ranging work as laureate, his grime theatre mash-up “The Making of a Monster” was performed to huge acclaim at Wales’ Millennium Centre: reviewing it for The Stage, Sally Hales called it “as emotionally raw as it is playful and imaginative”. Allen also developed this largely autobiographical story—in which he himself stars—as a radio play. First aired on BBC Radio 4 last June, it went on to win the 2023 Imison Award for the best original script by a writer new to radio.

This multi-disciplinary success is all the more remarkable when you discover how different it all might have been. Born in Newport where he still lives, Allen grew up in council housing on the aforementioned Hammond Drive.

I’m living proof that second chances exist, and I don’t take that for granted

When we meet via Zoom, Allen tells me that his love of words and of stories was kindled early. “I was a big Harry Potter fan. I remember my mum queuing at Woolworths at midnight to go and get me the latest book. And then I wouldn’t sleep. I’d read the whole book so no one could spoil it in school the next day.” Aged 10 Allen wrote his first story: a piece of Harry Potter fan fiction about an underground castle. “As a mixed-race kid on a council estate, I totally resonated with this story about a little boy who didn’t fit into the Muggle world.”

Despite finding solace and connection in stories and later in the lyrics of grime and rap artists (“that was my poetry”), Allen’s childhood and adolescence were increasingly dogged by his struggle to find his identity and place in the world as a mixed-race kid, brought up by a lone parent mother, his father almost entirely absent. “Too Black for my white friends, but too white for my Black friends… I fell into a cloud of grey,” as he puts it in “The Making of a Monster”. 

When he was 16, his hurt and anger at his missing father, combined with the microaggressions he constantly experienced at school, boiled over and he beat his mother up after an argument. A conviction for assault and battery and GBH followed, along with a three-year suspended sentence. It was the wake-up call Allen needed. By his early twenties he had not only stayed out of trouble, but had gained a BA degree in acting from Trinity University College in Carmarthen.

“I’m living proof that second chances exist, and I don’t take that for granted. So many people have said over the last year that I’m so brave for telling my story. But I’m not, because there are many young people and many adults who’ve gone through exactly what I have. It’s just that I’ve spoken up about it. Because we can’t change the narrative if we don’t talk about it.”

My Blackness is so complex. But for me being Welsh is as simple as breathing: I’ve never had to question that identity

One of his missions as laureate, Allen tells me, is to try and empower young people to find a sense of hope and purpose in life, and be the best versions of themselves. “Strength, Dreams, Creativity/And more/Are all waiting for you/Behind the door”, as he writes in his children’s poem  “Knock Knock”.

The Black Lives Matter movement provided a catalyst for Allen to dig deeper into notions of Blackness and identity in his work. His home town of Newport and other locations in Wales also feature frequently, so I ask him whether his Welsh identity is also important. He thinks for a moment. “My Blackness is so complex. But for me being Welsh is as simple as breathing: I’ve never had to question that identity. Doing the work I’m doing I could go off to London. But Wales is my home, it has always been my home.”

Allen is clearly passionate about his grassroots work with children across his home nation, particularly when it comes to making poetry accessible to them. “When I do workshops with kids, the first thing I ask is: who can tell me what poetry is? And for over a year and half, I have never done a workshop where a kid hasn’t said: ‘It rhymes’. Because that’s what they think poetry is. So I show them that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, and it doesn’t have to be a Shakespearean sonnet. For me, poetry is a creative expression of how you feel about the world that you live in.  Look at Stormzy smashing up Glastonbury on the Pyramid Stage: his wordplay, it’s poetic.”

Hay Festival in his sights

With around four months left of his two-year laureateship, Allen has a busy summer planned with three events at Hay Festival and a book tour to schools for the publication of Miracles. “We’re hopefully going to gift a lot of copies of Miracles to kids so they can take a book home and read those poems.” His final event will take place at the Welsh Senedd in Cardiff Bay, talking to politicians and other leaders alongside some of the young people who have contributed to Miracles.