Congratulations to everyone selected for the Wander Open Call 2025 competition! Thank you to everyone who sent in poems and I really hope next year to have this again and to offer this space. Congratulations to all the poets selected: Alienated by Mustafa Noah // How To Be by Sanjar Qiam. // The Dilemma by Hiba Rasheed // Wind Blows Sudden by B3dmah // Caged Bird by...
Hend Jouda is a writer from Gaza who’s published several poetry collections in Arabic: ‘Someone Always Leaves’, ‘No Sugar in the City’ and ‘Finger Survived’ and also, earlier this year, a collection in Arabic and French called ‘A Poet In Times Of War’. Hend was born in Al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza which has been attacked dozens of times by Israel, including a bombing on May 7th of a school...
Fionnuala O’Connell is a youth project worker, poet, and visual artist. She’s worked for many years to support young people through activities and capacity building. She reads her poems, ‘I’m Sorry’, ‘Mother Tongue’ and ‘Article 6’ – which is inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. ‘You can’t eat your rights. You can’t hold your...
Poet and youth worker Dean Oke studied Community Development and Social Policy, and has a postgrad in youth work – and his poetry reflects this interest in community issues and social justice. He’s an emerging poet with a strong social conscience and an advocate for youth voices. We talk about whether there’s enough room for young people’s voices in literary spaces right now...
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is a writer, performer, and arts consultant from India living in Ireland. Her work’s been published by Dedalus Press, Lifeboat Press, Little Island, Poetry Ireland, Banshee, and The Stinging Fly amongst others. She’s been the recipient of multiple Arts Council Awards, one of which supported her being the 2023 Writer in Residence for the Institute of...
Amano is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Ireland and Japan. Her practice includes sean-nós, vocal improvisation and folk storytelling. Amano working to de-colonise the Irish language through music, and writes beautiful, evocative and often politically charged poetry and spoken word. She reads her poem, ‘Underpass 6’ and we’ve a lovely talk about sean-nós singing, the...
In this special Poetry Day episode, Lavie Olupona reads her poems and we talk about being a young writer in Ireland today, setting up the new magazine Blaithi (‘Little Flower’ in Irish) and how her Nigerian and Traveller ethnicity influences her writing. Lavie has performed her work at Misleór, Many Tongues of Cork, and was recently part of the Good Day Cork radio...
My guest today is the fantastic Palestinian-American poet, journalist, teacher and activist Noor Hindi. What comes after awareness. And then what? And then what? There’s a bird. No. It’s a drone. My tax dollars pay for the bombs that kill my people. Her debut poetry collection ‘Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow’ published by Haymarket Books, was an honorable mention for the Arab American...
Helen Hutchinson is a poet with a lifetime of activism and community building – and a founding member of Pavee Point, a groundbreaking group set up in 1985 which used a collective community development approach to fight for Traveller & Roma human rights. She’s one of Skein Press’ ‘Play It Forward’ Fellows in 2023, and her first poetry collection, ‘From The Dirt Lane to the Open Roads’...
Καλωσόρισμα, Marhaben, salam, bienvennu, bemvindo, to the Gekko podcast. Created in collaboration with Hend, Hannah, Pedro, Alhamma, Nara, Maria and Amir during a series of podcasting workshops at Gekko School, Better Days, Athens, this piece visits Saffron Kitchen Project. pic by: Hadley Jackson ‘So the purpose of the project is not only to provide food but to use food as a tool for people to...