Julie YM Phung, Birmingham based artist of British Chinese heritage, has arrived to the world of Poetry and Spoken Word.

Naturally a creative artistic individual with a love for all things for arts and crafts, she entered the world of performance in local theatre and film and has since not got rid of the acting bug!

Julie  wanted to venture out a little bit more out of her daily grind of working the 9-5 as an Administrator, and do something that means a lot more for her own passion in music and art. Attending a one off drama workshop back in 2018 with the theatre company Yellow Earth, (now New Earth), and seeing many shows in the community, she has gone out of her comfort zone many times to try out and do her first performance in a theatre.

From this day on, she has gone on her own creative journey meeting more amazing people along the way in the creative arts industry and got involved furthermore with projects such as the Birmingham Opera Company as a volunteer actor; to a short trailer based on the drug scene of Birmingham dancing to a well-known Bollywood track, to appearing in a local rock music band where she transitioned from a formal dinner guest to a mental health patient.

Julie has dipped her fingers and toes into many roles making her quite the versatile actor she is, and all this started off from a side hobby outside her day job. Something she obviously enjoys doing a lot more!

Continuing to develop her craft in the arts for over 5 years, she is regularly involved with Move Midlands, a Birmingham based theatre performance group that brings together the East Asian community to empower and represent what it means to be East Asian in Britain through art.

Here, she has acted and performed for Lunar New Year in February 2024 at the Birmingham Hippodrome the first play that Move Midlands has got to give, and she has now taken on a role in the group to facilitate and guide a self-care space for other artists to reflect on their own development journey at the end of a rehearsal session.

She has taken many inspirations from other artists and learning more and more about herself, from others and her current work is working with a local film producer based on a thriller called ‘Waiting for Summer’ where she plays a hitman’s wife and shoots bad guys down in the deep forest! What else?

Julie has, of course been honing in on her creative writing in spoken word poetry, where she has performed recently at the Verve Poetry night in the Jewellery Quarter! Watch this space for her appearance at the Clarendon Hotel in Wolverhampton next art & spoken word exhibition in November!

                                      Mountains

The sunshine creeps, teases our every step
A windy road we walk caresses us like lover’s waltz
Your crazy hair is a psycho chase in a peace garden
Or for ken, rock stanced shrub above a sea of ants
We be going round the mountains here we go
Legs ache to the point of no break
Hands numb so, cracking the robot jive
Streams of clear lines like silk ribbon flows
Beneath our toes
We be going round the mountains here we go
Tears sprinkled skin from a dark swan lake
Sinus dribbles hangs in aerial bubble
Free my taste bud in the air like a pup begs more
We be going round the mountains here we go

Copyright Julie YM Phung