UNDERTOW is the UK’s first creative development scheme specifically focused on multilingual creativity. English is an additional language for over 20% of primary school children in the UK.

UNDERTOW is the UK’s first creative development scheme specifically focused on multilingual creativity. English is an additional language for over 20% of primary school children in the UK. Millions of young people live polylingual lives, switching back and forth between languages and cultures. UNDERTOW was created to embrace the massive creative potential in this group and ignite a passion for poetry that runs wild between languages and fosters multilingual creativity.

This year UNDERTOW will be run in collaboration with Manchester Poetry LibrarySing Lit Station and The Writing Squad. The programme will be lead by Kit Fan.

UNDERTOW 2024-25 Poets

 

Zainab Imran

Zainab Imran is a poet and facilitator of British Pakistani heritage from Manchester. She writes on a multitude of racial issues, with a particular focus on the queer diaspora, the hidden stories of women in the colonial struggle and post-colonial journeys to the West. In 2022, they were awarded the Royal Society of Literature and Sky Arts Award for Poetry as an emerging writer of colour, and was part of the Words a Stage 2.0 cohort with Apples and Snakes. Zainab is now working towards their PhD in creative writing at the University of St Andrews discussing race, queerness and dichotomy in diasporic identity.

 

Frank Qi

Frank Qi is a British-Chinese poet raised in Kent. He is a winner of the Foyle Young Poets Competition 2023, and was mentored by poets Jane Yeh and Jonathan Edwards. Particularly interested in the exploration of his dual cultural backgrounds, his poetry revolves around themes of belonging and identity. He will be attending university next year to study Psychology.

 

Noah Jacob 

Noah Jacob is an interdisciplinary poet, performer and critic based in London of mixed Arab heritage. Her writing often explores the boundaries between human and unhuman, interrogating the poetry within biology, automaton, and nature.

She was an editor and co-wrote a column on diaspora poetry for Zindabad Zine, and is an alum of Roundhouse Resident Artists, and Barbican Young Poets. She is also an alum of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, Apples and Snakes’s The Writing Room and T.S. Eliot Prize Young Critics. Her work has been featured by Love Supreme, We Out Here, 05: Redacted, Shubbak, Camden Inspire and Peckham Festivals, as well as in Ink, Sweat and Tears, orangepeel, Hecate, and Kalopsia mags.

She is working on a poetry-music E.P., exploring themes of pan-Arab identity, heritage, and intergenerational relationships, as well as nature, mythology, and religion.

 

Ethan Chua

Ethan Chua (any pronouns) is a Chinese-Filipino poet, community organiser, and translator. Their first chapbook, Sky Ladders, won the Frost Place / Bull City Press 2022 chapbook contest. Their graphic novel, Doorkeeper, is available in Philippine bookstores.  Their poetry has been published in Five Points and The Journal, their translations can be found in AGNI and Asymptote, and their words have been featured in the Washington Post.

 

Soledad Santana

Soledad Santana is a Venezuelan, London-based poet, feminist community organiser, and human rights researcher. She’s studying International Human Rights Law at Oxford University, and is an alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets programme. She has co-created various zines, including Tangled Tongues / Lenguas Enredadas, which examines the politics of monolingual publications and self-translation, and collates Spanglish poetry and short fiction. Recently, she’s interested in writing on political violence, and its effects on interpersonal, familial relationships. Instagram: @Lasoledadsantana

 

Tayiba Sulaiman

Tayiba is a writer and translator from Manchester. She graduated with a degree in English and Modern Languages in 2023, and completed an Emerging Translators Mentorship with Jamie Lee Searle in 2024. She currently works for New Books in German. Her recent translations from German include poetry by Swiss-Croatian writer Dragica Rajčić Holzner and a verse script for the 2024 Droste Festival at the Centre for Literature, Burg Hülshoff. She also writes poetry and prose; her work has recently appeared in Prospect Magazine, Briefly Write and on The Poetry Business’ blog. Her poem ‘Reading’ won the Eugene Lee-Hamilton Prize in 2021. She is a member of The Writing Squad and is currently working on a project responding to three major archival collections in Manchester: the North West Film Archive, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collection, and the Manchester Poetry Library.

About the programme

Kit Fan will be the lead tutor on the course this year, delivering workshops and providing one-on-one mentoring, both with an emphasis on deepening the participants’ critical engagement with their own work. He says: “A language, like a culture, is not an island. I’m thrilled to be part of UNDERTOW, a multi-faceted developmental programme to support polylingual poets to reflect and scrutinise their art and craft.”

The participants will also all be paired with a young multilingual poet in Singapore for peer-to-peer mentoring to help them further develop their multilingual creativity as part of our international partnership with Sing Lit Station.

The programme will be run by the PTC in Partnership with Manchester Poetry Library and SingLit Station, Singapore. The majority of the course will be delivered online over seven months, with monthly activities and peer-to-peer sessions, plus there will be meet-ups in Manchester to explore the library’s collection and get workshop facilitation training.

Manchester Poetry Library 

Manchester Poetry Library (MPL) is the North West’s first public poetry library  – open to all. Based at Manchester Metropolitan University, we host a collection of over 14,000 books and recordings profiling 20th and 21st century poets, a growing children’s collection, and a languages collection co-curated with bilingual and multilingual poets. MPL has a year-round learning programme for readers and writers, as well as free events, workshops and an exhibition programme.

Sing Lit Station

Sing Lit Station’s core mission is to serve Singapore’s literary community of writers and readers, through: creating a space for writers to grow their artistic and professional lives, inviting readers to explore our literary culture, and working with many partners to build inclusive and dynamic communities. Sing Lit Station’s flagship programmes include our workshop-for-schools programme Book A Writer, our community challenge / writing forum SingPoWriMo, and our annual Manuscript Bootcamp. Learn more about Singaporean literature through our websites poetry.sg and prose.sg.

The Writing Squad

The Writing Squad exists to create the next generation of writers in the North of England. We are a community of artists who make new work together and support each other’s development.

Meeting other mixed-heritage poets for me has meant finding people that identify with complex experiences, that feeling of self-imposed division and yet togetherness we embody. Having that safe space to openly converse about that and create has forged unique friendships and offered me a home for thoughts and emotions I’ve felt incapable of expressing since forever.
Lydia Hounat, UNDERTOW participant, British-Algerian (Kabyle) writer and photographer from Manchester