The event takes place online, from 6pm till 7.30pm (UK time), on Thursday, 17 October 2024.
As part of the evening, poets featured in the Africa Migration Report: an Anthology of Poems; Volume 2 (CivicLeicester, forthcoming) will share poetry and reflections on the theme of African migration, the vision they have on the matter, and how we get to a future where freedom of movement is a right that extends to and includes Africans on the continent, in the diaspora, and on the move.
The readings and conversations will be followed by a Q&A with all present.
Attendance and participation are free and open to all.
REGISTRATION
To attend, please register here.
FEATURED POETS
Oluwaseyi Adebola (MBBS, MSc. MRCS) is a Nigerian trained doctor currently working as a neurosurgery specialty registrar in Liverpool. He has a master's degree in translational neuropathology from Sheffield & a distinction in advanced diploma in creative writing from Tennessee. He is the author of a collection of short stories titled 'A Cluster of Petals' which was shortlisted for the 2019 Quramo Writer's award and the 2019 Afire Linda Ikeji Prize for literature. He is also the founder and curator of CreativeNaija.com, a social network/marketplace for creative Nigerians via which he curated the work- "I Am Nigeria: An anthology of what it means to be Nigerian in past, present and future tenses" He is a contributing author for ‘African Ghost Short Stories’ and his works have appeared in international and local platforms including Papercuts and Itanile.
Abiola Agbaje is a passionate writer, dedicated professional and an individual who likes to advocate for empathy and social consciousness. She’s currently on the path of honing her story telling skills and enjoys lots of quiet time as well as playing car race game.
Jim Aitken is a poet and dramatist living and working in Edinburgh. He is a tutor in Scottish Cultural Studies with Adult Education and he organises literary walks around the city. His last poetry collection was 'Declarations of Love', published in 2022. Jim is a widely published poet and Associate Editor with Culture Matters.
Brian Siang'ani Boyí is a poet from Kenya aged 24. He writes poems and short stories on different topics of life. The poems below have been published on scribd.com and on his Facebook page (Black-Well Poetry 23).
Barrington Gordon’s poems and short stories address conundrums behind humanity’s masks. His short story, "Grandfather's Feet" was published in Whispers in the Walls: New Black and Asian Voices from Birmingham (Tindal Street Press 2001), anthology endorsed by Benjamin Zephaniah and Bonnie Greer. The story was also read and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In addition, his work has been featured in anthologies and publications that include Voice Memory Ashes: Lest we Forget (Mango Publishing 1999), Steel Jackdaw: Edition 4 (2021), Poetry and Settles Status for All (CivicLeicester 2022), Welcome to Britain (CivicLeicester, 2023) as well as the Walsall Society of Artists' 73rd annual exhibition at the New Walsall Art Gallery (2024), and Art Meets Poetry which curated his Ekphrastic poems twinned with artists’ compositions as part of Wolverhampton’s Annual Literature Festival.
Gorrety Yogo is an early career researcher on Migration and Development. Gorrety enjoys writing, self-care and compassion during her personal time. She has self-published lots of note-books on self-care and one book on youth development on Amazon. Gorrety has been published by different projects on MIAG, Dynamig, IOM and the youth Cafe.
Monica Manolachi is a writer, literary translator and lecturer at the University of Bucharest, Romania. She is the author of Performative Identities in Contemporary Caribbean British Poetry (2017) and has published many academic articles on contemporary literature in English. Her latest work, Journeys in Europe (2022) is co-authored with Neil Leadbeater..
Mariam Mohammed is a Ghanaian graduate student at the University of Tennessee. As a teaching associate, and a second-year master’s student in the Rhetorics, Writing, and Linguistics department, she is deeply engaged in exploring the intersections of race, language, mental health, and belonging. Her academic interests are reflected in her scholarly work, which includes both research and creative writing. Her commitment to understanding and articulating these complex issues drives both her teaching and creative endeavors.
Epiphanie Mukasano was born in Rwanda in 1961. Now she lives in Cape Town and writes poems and short stories. Her poems were published in a collection, Living on the Fence (2007), by refugee women from Africa. In 2010, she published her own collection, Kilimanjaro on my lap.
NOTES
Organised by Forced Migration and The Arts in collaboration with CivicLeicester and Regularise, the Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology Series draws inspiration from the 2nd Edition of the Africa Migration Report, jointly published by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in March 2024. Through poetry, the series explores multifaceted narratives surrounding African migration, capturing personal, familial, community, national and international histories and experiences of African migration. Because every day is Africa Day, our call for submissions is open 365 days a year.
Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and art spaces for conversation looking at work taking place at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet. Developed with support from the University of Manchester’s Humanities Global Scholars Fund, the network hosts monthly indabas or discussion forums on the last Thursday of each month and encourages mutual support and collaboration.
Regularise is a migrant-led collective founded in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective aims to address the years of sustained hardships that undocumented migrants experience in the UK and continues to organise and campaign for justice and for the rights of undocumented migrants.
CivicLeicester is a community publisher that uses print and digital technologies, social media platforms, the arts, and online and in-person events to highlight conversations of transnational interest and significance. Books we have edited and published include Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World (2023), Poetry and Settled Status for All: An Anthology (2022) and Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (2019).
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