Human Emergency

Liv Torc is a spoken word artist and producer who plunders the vast caverns and dormant volcanoes of the human and planetary condition. A Radio 4 Slam Winner, a former Bard of Exeter, host of the Rainbow Fish Speakeasy and current co-host of the Hip Yak Poetry Shack. Liv runs Haiflu, the Hip Yak Poetry School and the spoken word stage at WOMAD. In 2019 her climate change in-the-face-of-motherhood poem The Human Emergency went viral across the world. She also performed at Glastonbury Festival on the Poetry and Words stage and represented Somerset for the BBC’s National Poetry Day celebrations. In 2020 she was chosen as one of four Siren Poets by Cape Farewell for a commission on climate change in the time of COVID. She also wrote and filmed a poem for the BBC’s Make a Difference campaign. Liv is the creator of the Haiflu, a UK wide poetry, photography and film project that uses crowdsourced haiku and images to tell the social history of life under lockdown. Haiflu has been featured in The Times, The Sunday Times and Mslexia magazine and is one of the only poetry initiatives ever aired on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme. Her first published book Show Me Life was released in 2015 by Burning Eye. She is also the proud author of the family friendly poetry book Banana Poems, released in January 2021.

“In Liv Torc’s witty, inventive and generous hands, poetry opens up new ways of noticing and sharing all that matters most.” Susannah Herbert, Head of Forward Arts Foundation and National Poetry Day (2012–2021);