Mae Diansangu's Fresh Ink commission

Mae is a Black queer spoken word artist from Aberdeen.

She is co-founder of intersectional feminist arts platform, Hysteria, and is a member of Scottish BAME Writers Network's operational team.

Mae is part of a network of Black community activists organising under BLM Scotland, and her work often centres on social justice themes.

Poet, writer and creative practitioner Nadine Aisha Jassat led the Fresh Ink initiative. She writes about Mae's commission:

'Mae Diansangu reminded me why I love poetry, why I came to poetry as a writer, and the power of poetry itself. Mae's poetry is powerful, honed and deliberate – full of skill and knowledge and that magic that the best poets weave between intelligence and inventiveness of craft and urgency and emotion of the heart. It is poetry which in some ways leaves me speechless; not because I do not know what to say, but because it is Mae's words I want to share, their urgency, their power, their truth spoken and shouted and outlined so clearly. A phenomenal contribution.'