NPL at 70: International Celebration
Don't miss out on the celebrations as we mark the National Poetry Library turning 70 with a who’s who line-up of international poets.
Hear extended live readings from CAConrad, John Kinsella, Lidija Dimkovska, Belinda Zhawi, Yang Lian and Olive Senior in this one-off showcase.
In addition, each poet has been invited to select their favourite poem from the National Poetry Library’s collection to share on the evening.
Poet, novelist and translator Lidija Dimkovska has published seven books of poetry, three novels and one short stories collection in her native Macedonian, one American diary, and has edited four anthologies. Her books have been translated into over 15 languages. She lives in Slovenia.
Belinda Zhawi is a Zimbabwean literary and sound artist based in south-east London. She is the author of the pamphlet Small Inheritances, and experiments with sound/text performance as MA.MOYO. Her work has been featured on various platforms, including The White Review, NTS, Boiler Room and BBC Radio. She’s held artist residencies with Triangle France, Cove Park, Serpentine Galleries and ICA London. Zhawi is the co-founder of literary arts platform, BORN::FREE.
CAConrad is the author of nine books, including AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021), which won the 2022 PEN Josephine Miles Award. They received a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship and a Lambda Award. A new collection of poetry, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return, is forthcoming from Wave Books in 2024.
John Kinsella's recent books of poetry include Insomnia (Picador, 2019), Brimstone: A Book of Villanelles (Arc, 2020) and the verse novel Cellnight (Transit Lounge, 2023). His new collection, The Pastoraclasm (Salt), was published in the UK in March 2023. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Olive Senior is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica 2021 – 24. She is the award-winning author of 20 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children's literature. Her many awards include Canada's Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Writers? Prize, an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica.
Yang Lian was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution. His work was criticised in China in 1983, formally banned in 1989 when he organised memorial services for the dead of Tiananmen, and he was in exile thereafter until 1995, finally settling in London in 1997. Translations of his poetry include five collections with Bloodaxe Books. He is co-editor with WN Herbert of Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Bloodaxe, 2012), and was awarded the International Nonino Prize in 2012.
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