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