Word Tent

Date: Saturday 6th July

Time: 12:30 – 17:15

Location: St George’s Square, Pimlico, SW1V 3QU

Who is this event aimed at: For All

About this event: Join SouthWestFest for an afternoon of performances in our brand new Word Tent, as part of our Festival Day. There’ll be poetry readings from Qisetna, Palewell Press and Rawanee, storytelling for adults and children and acoustic performances – a reflective space amongst the busyness of the day.

Full programme to be released, check our website and social media for performance times.

From 15:00 – 17:00, Qistena, Palewell Press and Rawanee will takeover the Word Tent for poetry performances from:

• Jamal Mehmood, a writer and filmmaker based in London. He works across poetry, short fiction and essays. His work has appeared on BBC4, Popula and Magma and he has been shortlisted for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry in Film.
• Qudsia Akhtar, Qudisa holds a doctorate in Creative Writing Ph.D. from University of Salford exploring British-Pakistani experience. She explores the concept of a dialogical self: exploring multiple selves, is intrigued by the concept of Iqbal’s sense of the higher self, and the journey of self-discovery.
• Hani Ormara, a British poet who lives in London and loves the bustle of city life. Hani’s writing draws on themes of displacement, womanhood, and identity seen through a lens carved by diaspora and a love of humanity.
• Ruhi Amir Alam is a writer, photographer, and artist. Her work draws on exploring our relationship with the natural world.
• Muniba Mahmud is self described compulsive writer. Muniba’s poetry frequently speaks to themes of social injustice, diasporic experiences, spirituality and feminism. Her work has been featured by the Lote Tree Press and she has performed in multiple poetry events in the UK. She is co-founder and lead of Rawanee.
• Paromita Ghatak is trained as a Hindustani classical singer and graduated from Rabindra Bharti University when she was 14 years old. In addition to singing classical music, Paromita also enjoys singing ghazals, geet, folk and Bollywood songs.
• Dr Anba Jawi MBE studied Geology at the University of Baghdad, one of a generation of pioneering women geologists in Iraq, and gained her PhD from UCL London. A chapter from her novel The Silver Engraver was included in the TLC Free Reads Anthology (2019) and two chapters were produced in a chapbook published by Exiled Writers Ink (2021).
• Adnan Mohsen was born in Baghdad in 1955, he published Memory of Silence, his first French poetry collection in 1994, followed by et cetera 1995; Texts about others 1996 and like this as a dual edition in French and Arabic in 2000.
• Hussam Eddin Baramo is a journalist and writer, born in 1961 in Damascus. Since college days, he has taken an active part in Syria’s political and cultural life. He co-founded a publishing company, Al-Wa’I, in Damascus in 1986, and was part of the creation of the Syrian Writers Association.
• Seyyid Ali Lourghi is a refugee poet from Algeria, Seyyid enjoys workshops like the creative writing groups at West London Welcome, and performing poems at poetry evenings and festivals around London.
• Camilla Reeve is a writer, independent publisher and organic gardener. She has five poetry collections: Travels of a Spider 2006; Travelling East by Road and Soul (flipped eye publishing, 2009); Raft of Puffins, 2016; Tales from Two Cities, 2018 and What I tell myself at night, 2022; and enjoys performing her work live.

Palewell Press is an independent not-for- profit publisher based in South West London, they aim to improve access to book
publication for refugees and other writers on today’s challenging issues.

Qisetna preserves the cultural and oral heritage of communities affected by conflict and displacement, one story at a time.

Rawanee believe in meaningful and authentic creative expression and strive to encourage and preserve rooted community creativity, and to provide a space for multilingual expression (in English, Urdu and other languages).

Free Event

southwestfest.org.uk