Monthly Exiled Lit Cafe

Monday 1st July 2019 at 7 pm

Imaginings

Painting by Francis Akpata

Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX
(tube Covent Garden or Leicester Square)

Ghareeb Iskander – Nada Menzalji -Shirin Razavian – Denise Saul

Open Mic/Discussion

Ghareeeb Iskander was born in Baghdad. He studied Arabic literature at the University of Baghdad and the University of London (SOAS) where he completed his Ph.D. in 2018. He published ten books including A Chariot of Illusion (Exiled Writers Ink, London 2009); Gilgamesh’s Snake (Beirut 2012);Translating Sayyab into English (London 2013); Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems, a bilingual collection, which won Arkansas University’s Arabic Translation Award for 2015, published by Syracuse University Press (New York, 2016). Some of his poems appear in The Keystone Anthologies (Dempsey & Windle, Guilford, 2014, 2015). He has taken part in Erbil, Reel, Edinburgh, Wigtown, Bath, Niniti, Poetry International, Shubbak and Iskele festivals. Ghareeb was the featured writer of Scottish Pen 2014.

Nada Menzalji is a Syrian poet and author. She studied at the University of Latakia, her hometown, but left Syria to live in exile in London since 1998, where she works as journalist. She taught Arabic language at SOAS for years. Her published poetry collections in Arabic are “Withered Petals for Dinner” and “Thefts of a Nameless Poet” as well as many articles and poems published in prominent Arab papers. She is member of the Union of Free Syrian Writers. She has performed her work internationally.

Shirin Razavian is a Tehran-born British poet whose poetry has appeared in Poetry London, Index on Censorship, Exiled Ink, Agenda and Persian Book Review among others. She has published five Farsi and English poetry collections in the UK, the latest of which was Which Shade of Blue featuring original works and translations of her work by the poet and translator of Russian literature, Robert Chandler. Her publications are: “Words to thoughts” Selection of poems in Farsi -1995, “The Sad Universality of Oyster” Selection of poems in Farsi- 1999, “Sweet Sonnets” Selection of 50 Ghazals in Farsi – 2005, “Free Fall” Selection of poems in English – 2008, “Which Shade of Blue?” Selection of poems in Farsi and English – 2010.

Denise Saul, a poet and fiction writer, was born in London. Denise won the 2011 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for her poem ‘Leaving Abyssinia’. Her pamphlets, White Narcissi (Flipped Eye) and House of Blue (Rack Press) were both Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Recommendations.

Host: Danielle Maisano, novelist
£5 entry/£3 EWI 2019 members and asylum seekers