2025
Long Live Poetry
Long Live Poets
1 session
Thursday 23rd January
at Camden Art Centre Free Event
Organised and hosted by Ziba Karbassi, EWI editorial and
committee member
ARTWORK BY AIDA WILDE
Art Centre, Arkwright Road, NW3 6DG
Poets & Artists Yang Lian, YoYo, Matthew Caley, Sascha Aurora Akhtar, James Byrne, Sana Nassari and Dr Peyman Heydarian Yang Lian’s work is translated by Brian Holton, and YoYo’s by Callisto Searle
Yang Lian, a Chinese poet, was born in Switzerland, grew up in China and now lives in London. He published 15 volumes of poetry, 2 volumes of prose, and many essays. His work has been translated into more 30 languages, and his representative works including YI, Where the Sea Stands Still; Concentric Circles; Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections; Lee Valley Poems, Narrative Poem, Anniversary Snow…etc. His works have been reviewed as “like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!'”, “one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature”. Among other awards, Yang Lian won 2024, The Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (Poland), A Tower Built Downward, Yang Lian’s collection of poems in English translation, won the English PEN Award 2023; 2021 the first Sarah McGuire Prize for Poetry in Translation held by Poetry in Translation Centre; 2020, he won“Jiu Ge Prize”of the first Miluo Literature Prize in China; 2019 Premio Sulmona” in Italy; 2018 NordSud International Prize for Literature, Italy, The 2018 Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand in Hungary. 2017, Narrative Poem was selected as a recommended translation by Poetry book Society in UK, as well as won the English PEN Award. 2016, he won the Pacific International Poetry Prize in Taiwan; 2014, the International Capri Prize; 2012, Nonino International Literature Prize. He has been elected a board member of PEN International PEN in 2008 and 2011. Yang Lian was a DAAD fellow in Berlin 1991– 1992 and a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2012 – 2013. He was elected a board of PEN International at 2008 and 2011; 2013, he invited to become a member of The Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression in 2014.
YoYo is a novelist and a painter. She has published eleven books of Fiction and Non-fiction in Chinese, and two books, Ghost Tide (2005) and One Man’s Decision to Become a Tree (2023), in English translation. She has held solo exhibitions and group exhibitions in London, Berlin, France, Italy, Poland and many cities in China including , Beijing, Shanghai, Yangzhou, Shenyang and Shantou…etc. YoYo has won the special prize for the foreign artists of 46th International arts exhibition in Sulmona, Italy 2018. Her works has been collected by more than 100 institutions and private collectors worldwide. YoYo was invited to participate in international literary activities in different countries of the world, the USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, India…etc. YoYo has been teaching SOAS (University of London), Eton College in Windsor, University of Sydney, and the University of Auckland. She is a Distinguished Professor at Shantou University in China. YoYo lives in Berlin and London as a free artist now.
Matthew Caley is a tutor/mentor for the Poetry School and has also recently taught poetry at the University of St Andrews, the University of Winchester and Royal Holloway University, London. His first collection, Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He has published six more since, four with Bloodaxe, Apparently (2010), Rake (2016), Trawlerman’s Turquoise (2019) and To Abandon Wizardry (2023). His work has featured in many anthologies, including Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), Poems of the Decade (Forward Worldwide, 2011), The Picador Book of Love Poems (Picador, 2011), Pestilence (Lapwing, Belfast, 2020) and Divining Dante (Recent Work Press, 2021). Prophecy Is Easy, a pamphlet of very loose versions from French twentieth century poets, was published by Blueprint in 2021. He’s read his work from StAnza in Fife – where he gave the St Anza Lecture 2020 – to the Globe Theatre, London; from Galway to the Czech Republic, to Novi Sad, Serbia. He lives in London with the Czech-born artist Pavla Alchin. https://www.matthew-caley.com
Sascha’s poetry has been widely anthologized, translated and performed internationally at festivals such as the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, Avantgarde Festival Hamburg and Southbank Centre’s MELTDOWN festival London curated by Yoko Ono. Akhtar has been part of political poetry protests — Against Rape (Peony Moon, 2014) and Solidarity Park Poetry — Poems for the Turkish resistance (Ed. 2014). Solidarity Park Poetry was a project set up with poet Nia Davies and holds a permanent space of 60 protest poems curated by Sascha and Nia from global poets in solidarity. Akhtar was part of the seminal Catechism: Poems For Pussy Riot anthology supported by English Pen. Her poems were translated into Polish to be included in a zine distributed on a day of Women’s Protest in Poland. Her work was also part of The Chicago Review’s #MeToo protest edition.
Akhtar has authored six poetry collections with Salt UK, Shearsman UK, Contraband UK, Emma Press, Knives, Forks & Spoons Press & ZimZalla UK. The first, The Grimoire of Grimalkin (SALT UK, 2007) was called ‘ a contemporary masterpiece,’ by the Chair of the Department of French Literature, Thought and Culture at New York University, Phillip John Usher. Akhtar is a Poetry School London Tutor and has been a judge for the Streetcake Prize for Experimental Writing for 2019 and 2020. Her custom-made course Breaking Through Writer’s Block has been published by The Literary Consultancy, London as part of #BeingAWriter . In 2019, Poetry Wales named Poems For Eliot as the number one poem of the last five years and Only Dying Sparkles was featured on the Southbank Poetry Library acquisitions & at the University of Leeds Poetry By Design Exhibit in the same year. Akhtar continues to develop as a creative force, having recently published a prose collection set in the country of her birth, Pakistan. The collection Of Necessity And Wanting published on October 14th, 2020 is a study of the economics of want and the politics of need in a post-colonial environment. 2021 should see her book of translations of pioneering feminist fiction writer Hijab Imtiaz coming out with Oxford University Press, India. Her fiction has appeared in Storgy, The Learned Pig, Tears In The Fence, BlazeVox, Anti-Heroin Chic, Queen Mob’s Teahouse and most recently in The Fortnightly Review . Akhtar is an ACE-supported artist having received the #DYCP grant both in 2018 and in 2020. In 2019, her poems appeared in the Blackpool illuminations.
James Byrne is one of the leading poet of Britania also , editor, translator and visual artist living in London. His most recent poetry collection is The Overmind (2024, Broken Sleep Books). Others include Places you Leave (Arc Publications, 2022) and Of Breaking Glass (BSB, 2022). A Selected Poems, Nightsongs for Gaia, is due in 2025. Byrne was the editor of The Wolf, an influential, internationally-minded literary magazine between 2002 and 2017. In 2012, he co-translated and co-edited Bones Will Crow, the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poetry to be published in English (Arc, 2012) and I am a Rohingya, the first book of Rohingya refugee poems in English. Byrne is the International Editor for Arc Publications and co-editor of Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Edge Hill University Press/Arc, 2017). His co-translation with the author Ro Mehrooz of Rohingya poems, Poems Written Through Barbed-Wire Fences, was published by Arc in October 2024.
Sana Nassari is a British-Iranian poet, writer, translator, and art historian based in London. She has published one novel and a collection of short stories, These Two Roses (Exiled Writer Ink, 2020). Her poetry collection O Delilah won second prize for an unpublished collection at the Journalists Poetry Award and Departure, a second collection of her poetry has been recently published by the reputable publishing house Morvarid in Iran. Sana has also translated two novels by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler and The Graveyard by Polish writer Marek Hłasko into Farsi. Her translation of The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer is forthcoming. Sana holds an M.A. in the History of Art from SOAS, University of London. Since 2021, she has been actively contributing to Writers Mosaic magazine, specialising in art and literature reviews. Aida Wilde is an Iranian born; London based printmaker/ visual artist and educator and the founder of Print Is Power & Sisters In Print projects. Her outdoor public art installations include, Honk Kong Walls 2019, Shangri-La, Glastonbury Festival, Wood Street Walls, Adblock Bristol, Croydon Rise Festival & various Brandalism projects. Aida’s fine art studio based serigraphy has been exhibited nationally & internationally. Her residency at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, Empowered PrintWorks (2015) was exhibited as part of the WARM Guerrillas: Feminist Visions exhibition in Minneapolis’s (2016). Her Credit Crunch poster was acquired and shown in Victoria & Albert Museums touring exhibition, A World To Win: Posters of Protest & Revolution (2014-2016). More recently exhibiting in Vienna’s Fine Art Academy, in Dark Energy, Feminist Organizing, Working Collectively (2019) and collaborating with Help Refugees UK on a number of projects that have been exhibited in Somerset House and Saatchi Gallery (2019). More recently (2020) Aida worked on the international cross culture exhibition disCONNECT which was a collaborative project with Schoeni Projects and Hong Kong Walls creating a pandemic related immersive installation which was installed in London & Hong Kong.
Born in Shiraz, Iran, Peyman Heydarian ( ن یا ر یدح ن یپما ) is an award winning music scientist and santurist. A computer scientist and musicologist, he adopted innovative tuning systems and performance techniques to play a multi-ethnic repertoire on Iranian santur (Hammered Dulcimer), and developed computer algorithms for the analysis of Persian musical signals. Peyman began learning music at the age of 5 currently teaches santur and daf (Kurdish frame drum) and musical signal processing. Peyman has established and presided over a number of musical societies and bands, including Music Association of Iranian Students and the National Iranian Student Orchestra. He is a graduate of Shiraz University, Tarbiat Modarres University, London Metropolitan University, and Queen Mary, University of London. He has toured the world with a multi-ethnic programme “The Voice of Santur”, performing Persian, Kurdish, Greek, Armenian, Turkish, and Celtic (Scottish & Irish) music in concert halls, museums, universities, and festivals. Peyman has performed over a thousand concerts in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Paris, Venice, Athens & Island of Hydra (Greece), Toronto & Niagara Falls (Canada), Hong Kong, and Auckland/Hamilton (New Zealand)
Aida Wilde is an Iranian born; London based printmaker/ visual artist and educator and the founder of Print Is Power & Sisters In Print projects. Her outdoor public art installations include, Honk Kong Walls 2019, Shangri-La, Glastonbury Festival, Wood Street Walls, Adblock Bristol, Croydon Rise Festival & various Brandalism projects. Aida’s fine art studio based serigraphy has been exhibited nationally & internationally. Her residency at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, Empowered PrintWorks (2015) was exhibited as part of the WARM Guerrillas: Feminist Visions exhibition in Minneapolis’s (2016). Her Credit Crunch poster was acquired and shown in Victoria & Albert Museums touring exhibition, A World To Win: Posters of Protest & Revolution (2014-2016). More recently exhibiting in Vienna’s Fine Art Academy, in Dark Energy, Feminist Organizing, Working Collectively (2019) and collaborating with Help Refugees UK on a number of projects that have been exhibited in Somerset House and Saatchi Gallery (2019). More recently (2020)
Aida worked on the international cross culture exhibition disCONNECT which was a collaborative project with Schoeni Projects and Hong Kong Walls creating a pandemic related immersive installation which was installed in London & Hong Kong.