As well as the creative aspects of the programme we built up practical skills with talks on ‘Capitalism for Poets’ by award-winning poet Inua Ellams, ‘Playing with Power’ by Theresa Cisneros, Senior Practice Manager Culture Equity Diversity Inclusion at the Wellcome Trust and ‘Your Blank is Political’ on art and activism by the Turner Prize-winning Array Collective.
UNDERTOW Year One Poets – AKA The UNDERTOW Eight
Reem Abbas
Reem Abbas is a Yemeni-Syrian reader, writer and lover of poems and, if really feeling it, the occasional short-story. She is currently writing her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge on the Persian artistic and classical poetic influences in the poetry of Basil Bunting.Nasim Rebecca Asl
Nasim Rebecca Asl is a Glasgow-based Geordie-Persian poet and journalist. Her work has appeared in publications such as Gutter Magazine, Modern Poetry in Translation and Middleground Magazine. In 2021 she was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for Poetry.
Liv Goldreich
Liv Goldreich (she/her) is a 2020 commended Foyle Young Poet and Adroit Journal Mentorship Programme alumna, she also won the Words of Unity poetry competition. Besides English, she’s particularly interested in Hebrew, German and classical languages, and the etymological weight of words.
Lydia Hounat
Lydia Hounat is a British-Algerian writer and photographer. She was a Poet-in-Residence at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections Archives. She co-edits interdisciplinary art zine, SOBER. and is currently curating the French and Amazigh collections at Manchester Poetry Library.
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a British-Ukrainian poet. She is a New Poets Prize winner (2021) and has been commended in the National Poetry Competition (2019). Her pamphlet Ways of Healing was published by The Poetry Business in 2022.
Phoebe Wagner
Phoebe Wagner is a poet, theatre-maker and facilitator. Her debut pamphlet The Body You’re In was published with Bad Betty Press, 2019. She is a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alum and Barbican Young Poet. Her work explores the politics in the personal and facilitates dialogue in communities.
Maggie Wang
Maggie Wang was raised in the United States and now studies at the University of Oxford. She is a 2021 Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critic and has edited for Singapore Unbound, the Harvard Review, and Asymptote.
Fathima Zahra
Fathima Zahra is an Indian poet based in Essex. She is a Barbican Young Poet and a Roundhouse Poetry Collective alum. Her poems have won the Bridport Prize, Asia House Slam, Wells Fest Young Poets Prize 2019. Her debut pamphlet Sargam / Swargam is out with ignition press.
Polylingual Renga
The poets who took part in the first UNDERTOW scheme in 2021-22 wrote a Polylingual Renga and performed it together at their final event.
A Renga is a form of collaborative poetry originating in Japan. The history of Renga as an art form goes back to 1356 but the first cohort of UNDERTOW poets gave it a modern polylingual twist. Their poem contained parts in German, Chinese, Arabic, French, Somali, Bulgarian, Spanish, Latin, Malayalam, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Turkish, Persian, Portuguese and Malayalam.
Temperate States
Wandelst du dich mit den Jahreszeiten,还是太阳年年给它的光明to cast your shadow at new angles to the ground?
In the comfort of stepping out into coldcrisp dew flicked from above: هديل & blue.nous sommes tous au printemps,our bodies budding crocuses, primrose.Tulips glow soorati in our cheshm
estamos esperando para cosasbut I don’t know how to wait for themher tafsut ululates — the pool of milk heart-shaped on your lipbenty γur-wen tutlayt to slurp from the rind of my cheek
I wilt under your searching gaze.Pomegranate seeds,ചെബരതി – my facebetrays itself under the questions of your furrowed brows.
You sing a blunt breath drinking cucumber waterby the white tablecloth. Splatter of fruit flies כמו המפה של יווןand the doily singes a rich shadow: פזמון.
under this iron sun my skin ripens like vyshnya forgottenon the windowsill you tell me this is how blood goes to waste
You make una broma que frioel sol estar a bowl of narajasgrowing mas preguntas
yellah habibti — benty sling suds up baby’s neckthe washcloth red, machete-cold-water, kiss her as she knead the kesra
& you make البوسة fragrant with memories onaveremezsin. Like your mother before you, you swatthe splatter & slice. آب پرتقال stings your eyes.
a primeira coisa que lembra é isso:the phosphorescent rain lighting itself as it dries,
the wet soil has never seemed more alive.you think of the song from ചെമീൻ (chemin), far moreexistential storms than this.
Donnerwetter! The umbrellas’ scalps scalded,the footprints נשיקות. Herrgott!
Written collectively by the UNDERTOW 2021/22 poets:
Reem Abbas, Nasim Rebecca Asl, Liv Goldreich, Lydia Hounat, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, Phoebe Wagner, Maggie Wang and Fathima Zahra.
Emerging out of the various lockdowns into this online and irl space has been joyous. I feel less alone knowing there are other poets like me: who struggle to hold multiple languages as they split and fracture in our mouths.Phoebe Wagner, UNDERTOW participant, poet and community artist from London