Ryan Tubridy was "frozen to the spot" listening to 18-year-old spoken word poet Natalya O'Flaherty, who performed her piece 'Not Like Other Girls' on Friday night's Late Late Show.  Her skilful command of language impressed him as much as the powerful sentiment behind her words.  She joined him in studio to talk about her work, her ethos and why she wants to bring poetry to the people.

"I hate having to tear things apart to understand them.  That's why I try and make my writing so accessible without dumbing it down…  I just want people to get the message and that's why spoken word is different…  You're speaking and people are listening to it, taking it in right away."

Ryan described 'Not Like Other Girls' as "a manifesto for a generation of young women". Natalya said it's more like a "general message" rather than a prescriptive way of thinking.

"It's very easy to be victimized as a woman and to put yourself in that box and say, oh, I'm a woman and I'm oppressed because of it.  It's not wrong, that's not incorrect to say but it's also the wrong narrative to have and the whole pitting yourself against other women, it' a dangerous thing…  This is a message to say, you don't have to be what you're expected to be but you can be that as well…  It's basically, do what you want, you're a grand auld girl!"

In the poem, Natalya talks about the pressure to conform.  "I thought in order to be respected and to be taken in by my peers, who were mostly boys, that I had to be like the boys," she said.  The piece is a testament to standing strong in your authentic identity despite outside influences.

"It's just the whole notion of, like, girls are soft and weak…  It's just not true but it's the way, it was the narrative that I grew up with so I believed it…  I wanted to be all these things that the boys are because they're promoted and celebrated whereas women are kind of, not so much shunned but looked down upon for the things they like.  People don't let girls enjoy anything.  You can't like makeup and you can't like shoes because that makes you dense and that makes you stupid and that's just not true.  I love make-up now, love all my shoes!"

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