EXILED LIT CAFE

Every month hear some fantastic exiled writers and musicians and there is an Open Mic session too.

October Exiled Lit Cafe at 7.00 pm
Tuesday 13th October
The Sekforde, 34 Sekforde Street
London EC1R 0HA

I am not English but I write in English

My Language is My Homeland or Is It?

image: Amna Elhassen

An evening of poetry and conversation with
Maria Cohut – Owen Gallagher – Ruvimbo Mutyambizi – Shamim Azad

Open Mic

Hosted by Amir Darwish

Maria Cohut

Maria Cohut is a Romanian writer living in Brighton. Her writing is haunted by questions of identity, displacement, and how to fight the banalisation of violence. It features widely online and in print, including the Borders & Belonging anthology, The Other Side of Hope, and The Madrid Review, and has also aired on the radio. Maria’s first chapbook, Spatter Pattern (back room poetry, 2023), explored the issue of gender-based violence by reimagining detective fiction tropes. Her debut collection, Multiple Exposures (Flight of the Dragonfly, 2026), is a multi-layered meditation on migration, writing in an adopted language, and healing fractured identities.

Owen Gallagher

Owen Gallagher was born of Irish parents in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. He lives in London. His current collection Clydebuilt (Smokestack Books) was short-listed for the Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, 2021. His previous collection A Good Enough Love published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015 was nominated for the T.S. Eliot Award. Owen has won poetry competitions. His poems have been displayed on London buses, in public places in Ireland and translated into other languages.

Ruvimbo Mutyambizi

(founder and director at For Her Child C.I.C)
Ruvimbo’s poetry was first published under her pen name MaiMo in the magazine The Other Side of Hope in 2023 and MaiMo has continued to write poetry and curate an artistic style examining the journeys of her life. Her artistic method developed from her lived experience of encountering themes in femininity and maternal instinct, at times infusing perspectives of exile into her pieces. MaiMo has provided the auto-biographical portrait ‘Held’ her depiction of a photo she personally replicated which tenderly displays her family truth as an exiled mother and child. Ruvimbo is also the budding vocal performer and songwriter, Fierce_Womb.

Shamim Azad

Shamim Azad is one of the best-known Bengali poets in the UK. She has published nearly 40 books including collections of poems, plays, children’s books, novels and translations, out of which 13 are collections of poetry. She writes in English, Bengali and Sylheti. Her works and translations have appeared in local and international anthologies and magazines including the New Yorker. In 2023 she received Bangladesh’s highest literary award ‘Bangla Academy Award in poetry. Among her other recognitions she is also a recipient of UK’s ‘National Lottery Award’ for Arts in the community. Azad is a member of artistic advisory board of Rich Mix, an advisor to Poetry Translation Centre and the Founder of the British Bilingual Poetry Collective (BBPC) UK.