James Massiah, the 27-year-old south London poet, producer and DJ – who last year featured on the Massive Attack single, Dear Friend – recently spoke at a 5x15 event (five creatives, each speaking for 15 minutes) alongside former Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman. Taking inspiration from Talking Heads and James Brown – among others – charismatic creative Massiah has also read at the Southbank Centre, Tate Modern and the Houses of Parliament. He’s created a film walking the streets of Dalston and Brixton, tunefully rhyming archetypes with arty types during a poem on gentrification. Massiah writes poetry that is sometimes performed to music and shares his work through The A & The E, a philosophy and arts-based project he founded in 2012 when aged 22, fresh out of university in search of a space to share his poetry and thought.