Old Worlds / New Kinships: a poetry workshop with Victoria Adukwei Bulley by the87press

This poetry workshop will explore how Cesaire and Mehri blend surrealism, humor, and critique to envision kinship beyond colonial legacies. Led by Victoria Adukwei Bulley and hosted by the87press.

Wandering between readings of Aimé Cesaire’s Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (1956) and work from Momtaza Mehri’s Bad Diaspora Poems (2023), this session explores how the poets use a blend of surrealism, reportage, humour and anti-colonial critique to throw open possibilities of kinship that transcend the histories of subjugation.

Inspired by these texts, participants will play with voice, sampling and prose poetry to produce writing that both withstands and embodies the contradictions of place and belonging in the spirit of a radical tradition.

This is part of an ongoing series of workshops with Victoria Adukwei Bulley, an award-winning poet who we continue to learn with and are inspired by. All fees from this workshop go directly to Victoria and we encourage you to receive this warm welcome by either attending or sharing with like-minded others.

Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a poet, writer, and artist whose work has appeared widely in publications including the London Review of Books, LitHub, and The Atlantic. She is the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, and her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, QUIET, won the Folio Prize for Poetry, the John Pollard International Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. QUIET is published by Faber in the UK and in North America by Alfred A. Knopf.