2024
Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Exiled Lit Cafe
The Aftermath
An evening of poetry and prose to reflect upon the many guises, demands and denials of survival across time, space and objects
Featuring George Szirtes, Tamara Wilson, Maia Elsner and Viv Fogel
Tuesday 23rd January at 7 pm
49 Great Ormond Street
London WC1N 3HZ
£5 or £3 for EWI 2024 members – pay on the door – cash only
or by Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exiled-writers-ink-presents-the-aftermath-survival-across-time-and-space-tickets-782057363627?aff=oddtdtcreator
George Szirtes is a multi-award-winning poet, translator, editor and painter. He won the prestigious Faber Memorial Award with his first book The Slant Door and continued to gather almost all national and international awards. His most recent memoir is The Photographer at 16.
Tamara Wilson is an award-winning poet and research fellow at the University of Roehampton. Her forthcoming genre-defying counter-memory text investigates the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide and Greek ethnic cleansing.
Maia Elsner is a highly acclaimed interdisciplinary poet, translator and Zell Fellow at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program in Michigan. Her debut non-fiction book is Dante Elsner (2023).
Viv Fogel is an artist, psychotherapist and wordsmith. Her most recent poetry collection is Imperfect Beginnings (2023). Following the success of her first collection Without Question (2006), Viv’s pamphlets Witness (2013) and How It Is (2018) were equally well-received.
Join Exiled Writers Ink for 2024
https://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/exiled-membership/
The Present Cannot Breathe: A time of Wars
image: Ze Tubia
How do writers respond? How can we write or think about disaster when it defies speech, compels silence and shatters meaning? Can poetry offer consolation? Can it turn darkness into light?
Featuring Atef Alshaer, Aviva Dautch,
Chris Beckett, Adnan Al-Sayegh with
Stephen Watts, Marsha Glenn
plus audience discussion
Adnan Al-Sayegh was born in al-Kufa, Iraq in 1955. His poetry denounces the wars and the dictatorships. Adnan has published twelve collections of poetry, including Uruk’s Anthem (Beirut 1996) and The Dice Of The Text (Beirut, Baghdad 2022). He left his homeland in 1993, lived in Amman, and Beirut then took refuge in Sweden in 1996. Since 2004 he has been living in exile in London. He has received several international awards, and has been invited to read his poems in many festivals across the world. His poetry had been translated into into many languages.
Atef Alshaer writes and translates poetry and is a Senior lecturer in Arabic Studies at the University of Westminster. He was educated at Birzeit University in Palestine and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he obtained his PhD and taught for a number of years. He is the author of several publications in the fields of language, literature and politics, including Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World, 2016; The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (with Dina Matar and Lina Khatib), 2014; A Map of Absence: An Anthology of Palestinian Writing on the Nakba, 2019; Love and Poetry in the Middle East (editor) and Language and National Identity in Palestine: Representations of Power and Resistance in Gaza. Alshaer regularly contributes to academic and media outlets.
Chris Beckett grew up mostly in Ethiopia.. He has won numerous prizes including the International Poetry London Competition in 2001. Sketches from the Poem Road, a collaboration with his partner, Japanese artist and sculptor Isao Miura, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2015. Carcanet has published two collections of poems about his boyhood in Ethiopia, Ethiopia Boy (2013) and Tenderfoot (2020). Carcanet also published the first ever anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry in English, Songs We Learn from Trees, which Chris translated/edited together with Alemu Tebeje. Songs was a finalist in the 2021 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.
Aviva Dautch Her poems have appeared in publications including Ambit, Acumen, Modern Poetry in Translation, The North, The Rialto, The Spectator and The Poetry Review. Residencies and commissions include The British Museum for Refugee Week (2021), The National Gallery (2022) Hay and Bradford Literature Festivals for the Gustav Klimt Centenary (2018) and the Picasso Centenary (2023). She is the resident poetry expert on the BBC Radio 4 series “On Form” and the literary co-translator for BBC World Service Journalist Suhrab Sirat; her translation of his book-length poem The Eighth Crossing about his refugee journey from Afghanistan was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021.
Marsha Glenn is from Bangladesh where she worked as a journalist. She is a member of the Freedom from Torture creative writing group Write to Life. She worked with journalist and writer Simon Hattenstone and The Guardian during her involvement in the Refugee Journalism Project 2018-2019. She has been published in Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction in 2023, Exiled Ink magazine and The Guardian online feature section. She has performed for NW Live Arts, Together Productions, Victoria and Albert Museum and fundraising events of several charities for the wellbeing of refugees in the UK.
Stephen Watts, poet and editor, will be reading Al-Sayegh’s work in English.
Hosted by Jennifer Langer
Book now on Eventbrite
or
pay on the door – cash only
£6 or £4 for EWI 2024 members
Betsey Trotwood pub
first floor
56 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3BL
Join Exiled Writers Ink for 2024
https://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/exiled-membership/
Join our Zoom Poetry Collective or prose group – free for members- register now: exiledwritersink@gmail.com
WORDS FOR THE SILENCED:
A Human Rights and Poetry Event
Sharing work from Imprisoned Writers around the World
In collaboration with Amnesty Westminster Bayswater, Amnesty Mayfair Soho and Regent’s University Liberal Studies Department
Poets featured include Ahmed Mansoor (UAE), Ilhan Sami Comak (Turkey), Varavara Rao (India) Mahvash Sabet (Iran), Golrokh Iraee (Iran), Galal El-Behairy (Egypt), Ala Abd El-Fattah (Egypt).
Speakers will include journalist Bill Law and human rights activists Drewery Dyke, Richard Ratcliffe and Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe.
Top Row: Galal El-Behairy,Golrokh Iraee; Middle Row: Ahmed Mansoor, Ala Abd El-Fattah; Bottom Row: Mahvesh Sabet, Varavara Rao, Ilhan Comak,
Come share the work of these important voices, listen to their supporters and human rights defenders talk about their work and take the opportunity to respond with your own words in a collective poem we will write together.
Event details:
Monday 11 of March 2024 6:30-8:30 pm
FREE at Regent’s University
Inner Circle Regent’s Park
London NW1 4NS
Nearest tube: Baker Street
www.exiledwriters.co.uk
Welcome to the May Exiled Lit Cafe!
Free event
Derick Armah is a researcher, poet and audio producer with an interest in telling compelling true-to-life stories that deal with the intimate connection between ‘person’ and ‘place’; the way that individuals are shaped by their physical, social, historical and cultural environments.
Dr Farah Didi is a poet, a former diplomat and a human rights defender from the Maldives. She has read her poems at a host of poetry events including as a guest poet at the Exile Lit Cafe. She is outspoken on human rights and democracy, which have informed the context of her poetry. She has served as the Maldives High Commissioner to the UK twice, the first time resigning in protest to the overthrow of the country’s first democratically elected government in 2012. Farah is the first Maldivian woman to get a PhD.
Afsaneh Gitiforouz British Iranian poet and novelist Afsaneh Gitiforouz has performed at a host of poetry venues. She is a published poet including by Radical Roots and recently in the anthology ’To Light The Trails’ in 2024. She was previously commissioned to lead the poetry section of ‘Age of Many Posts’ at the Barbican center in London in 2022.
Malu Halasa is a writer and literary editor of The Markaz Review. She has been published in The Guardian, Financial Times and TLS. Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi Books, 2023) is her third anthology that features essays, art and photography from Iran.
Shirin Razavian is a Tehran-born British poet whose work has appeared in Poetry London, Index on Censorship, Exiled Writers Magazine, The London Magazine, Agenda and Persian Book Review among others. She has published six Farsi and English poetry collections in the UK, the latest of which is Bird of Darkness, a selection of contemporary poems in Farsi. Shirin is the poetry editor of “World Cultural Heritage Voices” magazine (Savepasargad.com), an Exiled Ink magazine editorial committee member and a judge for the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation Poetry Prize. Some of her poems were recently translated to Czech and published in an anthology called “Before Infinity Ends”. Shirin’s poetry is also featured in an anthology by the United Nations Society of Writers called “Happiness-The Delight Tree”, in the USA in an anthology titled“The Poetry of Iranian Women” and the UK anthology “Silver throat of the moon”, titled after a verse from Shirin’s poem “Dying young”.
Music by Peyman (Fakhri) on flute and Shadi on daf
Hosted by Afsaneh Gitiforouz
Camden Art Centre
Drawing Studio (first floor)
Arkwright Road
London NW3 6DG
nearest stations: Finchley Road & Frognal Overground
and Finchley Road Underground
Poetry of Protest
Spotlight on Gaza
An evening exploring the role of poets and writers in protests movements and how activist arts can influence the anti-war movement.
Featuring Inua Ellams, Tasneim Zyada, Denisse Vargas -Bolaños, Shahd I Karaeen Mahnavi and Jude Rosen.
Hosted by Danielle Maisano.
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a cross-disciplinary artist, an internationally touring performer, a poet, playwright, screenwriter, graphic artist & designer. His published books of poetry include Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars, Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales, The Wire-Headed Heathen, #Afterhours, and The Actual. His first play The 14th Tale was awarded a Fringe First at the Edinburgh International Theatre Festival. His plays include Barber Shop Chronicles, Three Sister and The Half-God of Rainfall. In 2023, He was honoured with an MBE for Services To The Arts, and an Honorary Doctorate from University Of The Arts, London.
Tasneim Zyada is a London-based writer and published poet. Born into a tumultuous history with her grandparents fleeing Haifa, Palestine in 1948, she documents the generational stories that rise to the surface within her own. Tasneim’s work touches on memories, mental health, relationships and faith.
Denisse Vargas -Bolaños is a Bolivian poet and writer. She is a member of the feminist literary collective “Las Juanas” and of SLAP (Spanish and Latin American Poets and Writers). Her poems and short stories were published in various anthologies, and literary magazines, including Invisible Presence, New Voices (2018).
Shahd I Karaeen Mahnavi is a Palestinian poet and entrepreneur, born and raised in Jerusalem. Growing up in a creative household with poet parents, she developed a deep love for writing, art, and singing from a young age. At 18, she moved to the UK to further her studies. Today, Shahd utilises poetry, notably written in her second language of English, as a powerful medium to address oppression and injustice, amplifying the voice of the Palestinian people; a cause she remains committed to and she continues to attend poetry and community events to make a positive impact and promote peace.
Jude Rosen is a former oral historian, urban researcher and translator and currently runs poetry workshops for refugees and migrants. Her pamphlet, A Small Gateway, (Hearing Eye in 2009) of East End Jewish family life and intercultural history includes a sequence on Palestine. A pamphlet Underfoot is currently in competition and poems have been published in Tears in the Fence. Poems from Reclamations: voices from the Olympic zone (longlisted for the LiveCanon First Collection Prize in 2015) appeared in The Art of Dissent: Adventures in London’s Olympic State, (Marshgate Press, 2012); Long Poem Magazine, South Bank Poetry London Poems Anthology and Envoi.
Welcome to the July Exiled Lit Cafe!
Thursday 25th July at 6.45 pm
Free event
Captured by Myths
An evening exploring the literary traditions or myths that have seeped into our poets. What epics, myths and buried stories have shaped, influenced or inspired the poets? They may also be resisting these influences.
Featuring
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Julie Fox
Ghareeb Iskander
Mehrangiz Rassapour
Poetry – Discussion – Open Mic
Hosted by Jennifer Langer, EWI founding director & poet
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi grew up in Omdurman Khartoum in Sudan where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. He is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. His latest collection is A Friend’s Kitchen (2023, Poetry Translation Centre) translated by Bryar Balalan and Shook. It is a profound collection that deals both with the spiritual incomprehensibility and physical reality of exile. His first poetry collection was Songs of Solitude (1996), and he has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen (1999 & 2000).
Julie G. Fox has been writing poetry since she was a young girl, with two poetry books published in the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s. After becoming a political refugee in the early 1990s, she continued her poetic journey in English. Having called the USA, UK, and France home, Julie’s rich experiences breathe life into her work. Her book of poetry is The House Exhaled (Amazon). Julie G Fox is the author of over fifty award-winning children’s books, including “Katya’s Sunflowers” and the poignant “The Dreamer: The Girl Who Dreamed the War Over,” dedicated to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.
Ghareeb Iskander is a poet, translator and researcher living in London. He taught Arabic at SOAS, University of London where he received his PhD in Near & Middle Eastern studies with an emphasis on literary translation. He published serval books including A Chariot of Illusion (Exiled Writers Ink, London 2009); Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, a bilingual collection, which won Arkansas University’s Arabic Translation Award for 2015 (Syracuse University Press, New York 2016); English Poetry and Modern Arabic Verse: Translation and Modernity (I. B. Tauris, London 2021). He was longlisted for the 2021 John Dryden Translation Competition. He is a judge of the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation 2024. Iskander translated Derek Walcott, Ted Hughes and other world modernist poets into Arabic and Abdul Wahab al-Bayati, Hasab al-Shaikh Ja‘far and other Arab modernist poets into English.
Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah) is poet, literary critic and editor of Vajeh magazine who was born in the South West of Iran (Khoram-Abad). Her collections of poetry in Farsi are Jaragheh Zood Mimirad, Va Sepass Aftaab, Parandeh Digar, Na and Sayaareh ye Derang and her book in English is The Planet of the Immortals (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021). Her work has been translated into many languages including English, French, German, Polish and Italian. At an international poetry festival in France, her poems were highly acclaimed and she was given the title ‘The Dawn of Literature’ in the culture section of Le Temps.
Camden Art Centre
Drawing Studio (first floor)
Arkwright Road/corner of Finchley Road
London NW3 6DG
nearest stations: Finchley Road & Frognal Overground
and Finchley Road Underground
at
The Wheatsheaf
Home Front
Featuring Chrys Salt in her widely performed and acclaimed show ‘Home Front/Front Line’, a deeply personal, profoundly moving and brave exploration of what it means to be a life-long pacifist and mother whose son is fighting in the Iraq war.
plus
Three exciting poets explore what it means to be in the UK, far away from their own home front and armed struggles.
Mika Hadar – Israel/UK
Iryna Starovoyt – Ukraine/UK
Sana Nassari – Britain/Iran
Mika Hadar is a poet and an artist who divides her time between London and Tel Aviv, Israel. Her poetry collection ‘In The Seam’ was published in 2016 in Hebrew and English. Her current poetry book ‘The Third Watch’ will be published soon. Mika’s childhood was spent in the shadow of the Holocaust with her parents being survivors from Ghetto Lodj in Poland. She exhibits and runs workshops internationally, sharing her blend of artistic expression and holistic teaching.
Iryna Starovoyt is a poet, essayist and humanist, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University, recurrent visiting fellow at St. John’s College, Oxford. Member of PEN Ukraine, she authored three volumes of poetry. Her poetry has been anthologised, translated into several languages, set to music, embroidered on canvas in Lithuania and fired in ceramics in the USA. She is on the board of the annual Lviv Book Forum, Culture Congress, Drahoman Prize, the Light of Justice Award, and serves as the Head of the Jury for the transnational literary prize UNESCO’s City of Literature based in Lviv.
Sana Nassari is a young award-winning Iranian writer, poet and literary translator. Her poetry collection ‘O Delilah’ banned by the censor authority in Iran, won the Journalists Poetry Award second prize for an unpublished collection. Her short story collection is ‘These Two Roses’ (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021). Currently, she writes reviews for ‘Writers Mosaic Mag’. She holds an MA from SOAS in the History of Art.
Open Mic
Hosted by Shamim Azad, poet, writer & EWI committee member
The Wheatsheaf
25 Rathbone Place
London W1T 1JB
(1st floor)
Nearest tube Tottenham Court Road
Entrance: £6
£4 for EWI 2024 members – pay on the door – cash only
or by Eventbrite – link to follow
Free for asylum seekers