JENNY Lindsay's new poetry wades into deep and turbulent and perhaps uncomfortably contemporary waters. Sexism, misogyny, entrenched power structures, and pornography will be addressed in the new show by one of Scotland's leading spoken word poets.

You may not have heard of Lindsay. But she is one of Scotland (and the UK’s) leading spoken word poets, and will stage her first solo show for two years, on February 1 at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh. Gender, sexism, ingrained prejudice and silence-breaking will be tackled in rhyme and rhythm. And, she says, she will push the subjects into some unusual territory.

She says: "There were lots of things I had been writing about this, but I was a bit like 'Jenny, you can get into lots of trouble writing about that!' But I felt like now is the time to just get it out there."

The show is called This Script – the title is a "univocal" poem, meaning it uses only one vowel sound, one of several she has written for the show. The Ayrshire-born, Edinburgh-based poet says she was inspired by many things, but particularly #MeToo. The show, under her Flint & Pitch production company, also takes on "schisms within feminisms, discussions about 'manels', 'mansplaining', representation and being told to 'shhh'."

The #MeToo hashtag began and spread on Twitter and other social media last year in a wave of disclosure and testimony, in which women revealed the sexual harassment and assault they had endured. Prompted by the Harvey Weinstein revelations – the Hollywood producer who denies a succession of sexual assaults and other crimes – the hashtag was coined by the actress Alyssa Milano in October, and it became the marker for a tidal wave of revelation, anger and empathy. A new, politicised hashtag, #Timesup, has emerged. Now new revelations of sexism or sexual assault and harassment, particularly in the cultural world, are rising to the surface.

I meet Lindsay in the Storytelling Centre, where she will be performing. She is an accomplished poet: she was the BBC Slam Champion in 2012 but rose to prominence in a collaboration with fellow poet Rachel McCrum, as Rally and Broad for four years until 2006. Lindsay's 2015 debut solo show, Ire & Salt, received much acclaim. Her new show, she says, will not only ruminate on feminism and backlash, but on more outré subjects – including the comments left on online porn videos – and will see her perform the univocal poems: poems using only one vowel sound.

We meet when the ripples of the initial #MeToo wave are still in motion: we talk just after the Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood, where Natalie Portman caused a minor furore by pointing out (factually) the all-male short list for director. Lindsay says: “There's been absolutely tonnes of stuff happening. I find the #MeToo campaign simultaneously quite uplifting but also totally, totally exhausting. Although this is happening on social media, this isn't the first time that people have been talking about these things, and maybe we have been talking about them behind the scenes. The show itself isn't all about #MeToo, but it is about women, it is about the rifts within feminism.”

She notes: “A few days ago there was this big petition that’s been signed by people like [French actress] Catherine Deneuve, saying 'this view of feminism infantilised women' and 'you are all anti-sex'.”

Lindsay adds: “That has been a raging conversation within feminism for decades. I find the aftermath of #MeToo really frustrating. It is classic backlash stuff. If you read Susan Faludi's book Backlash [The Undeclared War Against American Women] these kind of reactions happen every time women try and say something collectively.”

That backlash has interested her for years. She admits that "all the different discussions about gender, about gender identity, all of these things are incredibly difficult to talk about and particularly difficult to talk about in spoken word, where you are using your art to explore these issues." And, she notes, while continuing to entertain the audience.

We talk about the aftermath of #MeToo. What is the next practical step? “Any institution worth its salt should have HR policies to deal with incidents like this. The problem with the arts is that you have a hell of a lot of freelancers, people working for themselves, you don't have a lot of people who you can go to and say 'this has happened to me'. The idea that this is all some kind of massive revelation is actually quite offensive. Because women have been talking about this for ages. And just because it was all en-masse and at once, everyone thought 'Oh God'."

She adds: “Nothing exists in isolation, we are talking about a systemic societal issue which is male violence against women, and within that, abuses of power, and hierarchies in the arts. As I have said about the 'not all men [are like that]' theme – I have yet to hear of a women boss forcing a male artist to masturbate: that just doesn’t happen. That just doesn't happen."

Lindsay became a performing poet by accident. While she was living in Glasgow, she was burgled. The thief stole her keyboard, with which she was performing songs at the open mic night at Nice’n’Sleazy. So she decided to read her lyrics – poems – instead.

She says: "I started regularly performing, still never really thinking of myself as a poet, until someone called me one. I'd always written 'poetry', but I thought of it more as lyrics. I wanted to be a rock star novelist back then." The poet adds: “I actually thank the thieves in my first collection of poems. When I started out, there weren’t any platforms, and certainly no paid platforms. The general advise was 'move down to England' but I was like: 'No, if it doesn’t exist in Scotland, then let’s build it, because I don’t want to move.’ Amidst helping establish and promote the scene, she also studied politics at Stirling University.

Lindsay’s new univocal poems consist of words of one vowel. The use of the form was inspired by fellow poets Ross Sutherland and Luke Wright, who have used it too.

The pornography-related poems, she says, came from her previously held view that "porn is bad, it’s horrible and disgusting and all the people who consume it are total wolves and horrible people, and you know, there is validity to that argument." So she studied the comments written underneath online porn videos, in the expectation she could use some of the opinions for some 'found poetry'. What she found intrigued her. She says: “There were things I was expecting, like horribly misogynistic comments, but actually I found the most intriguing analysis about the mise en scène [scenery] about how a basketball was a little bit distracting – it was hilarious. I set out to find something to make a poem about, and I found the opposite.” She adds: "The main thing I found in the comments were a real concern that they really, really needed the women to be enjoying it. Which I found very interesting. I read widely around pornography on both sides, and there is a real concern with people that consider it a lot that it is consensual, that the women are enjoying it, that they are well paid, and there has to be or, what the hell am I watching?"

The show, she says, will not provide conclusions about sexism, misogyny, #MeToo, porn, or anything else.

“There is no way that everyone will go home thinking, 'I agree with everything Jenny said' but that's not what I am looking for. In fact it would be better if people said 'Oh, that made me think differently'.

This Script, Thursday, February 1, Scottish Storytelling Centre. Edinburgh, 7:30pm, £8