Hargeysa International Book Fair Pop-Up
Saturday 30 June, British Library
17:15 – 18:45

Launching the Hargeysa Breeze poetry collection from Somaliland with Mpalive Msiska, Martin Orwin and Jama Musse Jama.

Founded in 2008, the Hargeysa International Book Fair is an annual event that brings writers, poets, artists and thinkers from Somaliland and from all over the world gather to share and discuss their art and literary productions with a wider audience. Over the past ten years, poets have visited the fair in Hargesya, and Laas Geel an archaeological site of ancient rock paintings located outside the city and written about their experiences. In this event, we learn about one of the largest public book fairs in the Horn of Africa, and celebrate the launch of the poetry collection Hargeysa Breeze.

This anthology of poetry represents poetic responses by some of poets who attended the Hargeysa International Book Fair in the past 10 years, to the city of Hargeysa and to Laas Geel, the archaeological site of ancient rock paintings outside the city.

” … the poems presented in the anthology are not dissimilar from the representations at Laas Geel by its inhabitants of long ago. Like their predecessors, the poets are attempting to capture and represent what must be complicated, multifaceted and ineffable feelings and thought about the city of Hargeysa, Laas Geel and Somaliland for contemporary and future readers, so that they too will take something from the individual as well as shared perspectives of the writers on an important city in an emergent nation and an archaeological site deserving of the status of world heritage.”

Included in Weekend Pass and Saturday Day Ticket.

Image credit: Kate Stanworth