From the Boat Arts Centre again in the heart of Athens in Kypseli with Mustafa and Moody: we talk about racism in Greece, Mahmoud Darwish, normalising pushbacks and genocide, writing as witness, collective liberation, Moody reads his poem ‘Borders’ and Mustafa reads his ‘Kanoon’ (‘ كانون’). ‘We grew up with the – ‘there is a better life in Europe’ – so you want to leave this place...
@bairbreflood SAUTI YOUTH & @Olympio for Wander podcast special live event at Laneway Gallery, Cork w/ visuals by Loop Conspiracy aka Silvio Severino. Full episode out now. Thanks to @The Arts Council (Ireland) for their support and all poets and performers Neo Gilson, @josie Fionnuala O’Connell, @OlhamatsO 🔥 ♬ original sound – Bairbre Flood Poets from Wander performed at the Laneway...
Sauti Youth, ‘voice for the voiceless’ in Swahili, uses art and music to express themselves and to challenge racism in Ireland. They held the second Youth Anti-Racism Summit in Cork City Hall in 2024 and organized ‘Riot Against Racism’ to bring together many different performers and artists to tackle racism. Thanks to the fantastic young people of Sauti Youth who talk to me for this...
Good Day Cork was created by Joanna Dukkipati in 2018 with a mission to amplify Cork’s unrepresented voices. The first event they held was Many Tongues of Cork in March 2019. Many Tongues is a multilingual prose and poetry gathering that recognises Cork’s intercultural identity. And the aim of the event is to help people understand different cultures by using the sounds of the...
Olha Matso has performed at poetry readings and spoken word events at the Winding Stair Bookshop and Vicar St. (as part of the Red Cross/Ukrainian Action Ireland event in 2022) and others throughout Ireland. She’s created poetry videos on her youtube channel and was recently commissioned by artist Varvara Shavrova for a poetry reading at the launching of an installation at the Photo Museum...
Suad Aldarra is a Syrian-Irish writer and data scientist. She was selected as the Common Currency writer in residence for Cuirt International Festival and has been on panels at many different literary festivals throughout Ireland, including at the Dalkey Book Festival, and most recently in April 2024, at the Cork World Book Festival. Her debut memoir, I Don’t Want to Talk About Home was published...
Continuing on with Dzaleka poets pt2 – the African Youth Artistic Poetry in Malawi, I’m delighted to have Kenny Mujago, Mirielle Abedi, Eagle, and Harry Rama as my guests today. ‘A lot of my poems are advocating for Africa and refugees.’ – Harry Rama Kenny Mujago, reads an extract from his story, ‘A Snack From The Corner Street’ about the myriad connections food like...
Charles Lipanda Matenga is a poet and activist whose poems have been published in the anthology ‘Our Voices Are Gathering’ in 2023 and ‘Being A Refugee Wasn’t A Choice’ due out later this year. Our flag is dying for you have failed to protect your mother Congo. You brought war instead of peace. When will you stop grinding and crushing us? We are spice in the mortar. How long these bloodshed be...
Neo Florence Gilson is a poet, writer and storyteller from South Africa. In 2021, she was awarded the Play it Forward Fellowship with Skein Press. Her writing is published in The Stinging Fly, Storm’s Journal of Poetry, Prose and Visual Art, The Irish Examiner and Poetry Jukebox Belfast. And she’s Artist in Residence with Sample Studios and the Graffiti Theatre Company in Cork...
Marwan Makhoul is a Palestinian poet who has published several works of poetry, including ‘Hunter of Daffodils’, ‘Land of the Sad Passiflora’, ‘Verses The Poems Forgot With Me’, ‘Where is my Mom?’ and ‘A Letter From The Last Man’. His poems have won several awards and appeared worldwide in Arabic publications and translated into many...