Featuring Eric Ngalle Charles, hannah Hodgson, Kim Moore & Golnoosh nour
Date: Saturday 30th July
Time: 13:00
Venue: Theatre
Price: £5.00 / £3.00
This event will include BSL interpretation
Can poetry be a form of empowerment? What do we mean by empowerment anyway?
Join Eric Ngalle Charles, Hannah Hodgson, Kim Moore and Golnoosh Nour to discuss these questions and more. These three poets all wrestle with the paradox of empowerment in their poetry and what this might mean.
Eric Ngalle Charles’ first collection Homelands draws widely on personal experience – being raised by matriarchs in Cameroon, being sent to Moscow by human traffickers, and finally finding a new home in Wales. At the heart of his poetry is always a desire to bear witness as he moves between the past and the present, between countries and across continents to explore notions of home.
Hannah Hodgson’s first full length collection 163 Days takes the reader on a moving journey, using a panoply of medical, legal and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness.
Kim Moore’s second collection All the Men I Never Married examines what happens when lyric poetry is used to explore experiences of everyday sexism and female desire. Her work always circles back to a central question – can poetry be transformational, and who can it transform?
Golnoosh Nour’s collection RockSong is fresh, queer, brave, and profound. The poems in this collection from London based Iranian Golnoosh do not disappoint.
This event will include BSL interpretation
Authors
Eric Ngalle Charles is a Cameroonian writer, poet, playwright, and human rights activist based in Wales. He was awarded the Creative Wales Award 2017/2018 for his work on the topics of migration, trauma, and memory. In his autobiography I, Eric Ngalle: One Man’s Journey Crossing Continents from Africa to Europe (2019), he recounts his journey to Europe, where he spent several years seeking refuge. He sits on the boards of Literature Wales and Aberystwyth Arts Centre Advisory Group and began his Ph.D. at King’s College London in October 2021. His debut collection Homelands was published by Seren in 2022.
Hannah Hodgson is a poet living with life limiting illness meaning she is a palliative care and hospice user. Her work has been published by BBC Arts, The Poetry Society and Magma, amongst other outlets. She is a 2021 winner of the Poetry Business New Poets Prize. She is a recipient of a 2020 Northern Writers Award for Poetry. Hannah has worked with both NHS England on policy guidance and the charity Together for Short Lives. She has spoken with MPs on her experience of the NHS, as well as The Royal Society of GPs. In recognition of her activism Hannah received a prestigious Diana Award in 2021, given in the name of Diana, Princess of Wales. In December 2021, she was awarded the honour of a Diana Legacy Award in further recognition for her campaign work. Her debut collection 163 Days was published by Seren in March 2022.
Kim Moore is an award-winning poet. She completed her doctorate in Poetry and Everyday Sexism at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2020. Her poems have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. She regularly appears at festivals and events. Her pamphlet, If we could speak like wolves (Smith-Doorstop) was chosen as an Independent Book of the Year in 2012 and was shortlisted for other prizes. Moore won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. In 2014 she won a Northern Promise award. Her debut collection The Art of Falling won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was longlisted for Lakeland Book of the Year in 2016. Her second collection All The Men I Never Married was published in 2021. She is co-director of the Kendal Poetry Festival. Photo credit: Lorna Elizabeth
Golnoosh Nourpanah is a published poet, prose writer, and lecturer. In 2019, she earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Golnoosh’s debut short story collection was published in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. Golnoosh’s full length poetry collection Rocksong was published in 2021. Her work has also been published in Granta, Spontaneous Poetics, and Columbia Journal amongst others. Golnoosh has performed her work across the UK and internationally, including in Stoke Newington Literature festival and Isn’t Everything Poetry in Berlin. Golnoosh teaches creative writing at the University of Reading. Photo credit: Darius Amini
Books
