DIGITAL ONLY
Wednesday 20 October 2021
Time: 16:00 – 17:30 (BST)
Venue: Zoom
Tickets: FREE / £2 / £5 / £10 (Pay What You Can)
With Wana Udobang.
A poetry workshop that uses food and recipes as a pathway to create new poems.
Thinking about our collective experiences and trauma through an ongoing pandemic, racial uprisings and protests across the world, it feels like we have been fighting for our lives individually and collectively. As Africans food has often been not only a source of nourishment but also love, joy and pleasure. We gather as communities to eat, we use food to heal, as aphrodisiacs, to celebrate. Food is a central theme in our lives and we pass on recipes through generations as both legacy and resistance. Comfort Food with Wana Wana is to memorialise, reimagine and reclaim comfort, joy and pleasure.
By creating new works of poetry, we speak to the breath of our experiences that both us as poets and readers can share and return to. We archive our history, heritage, lived experience and new imaginings. During the workshop, participants will engage with memories around food as well as other recipe poems to create their own new works.
Structure of workshop:
The workshop will be delivered via Crowdcast and will last one and a half hours (16:00 – 17:30 BST) including breaks and time for you to write. You will need to have a computer or smart device and a reliable internet connection in order to participate. This is a live event, which will not be recorded.
Here’s what you need to know about Wana Udobang:
Wana Udobang is a writer, poet and performer. She has three studio albums Dirty Laundry, In memory of forgetting and Transcendence which interrogate memory, familial bonds, healing and joy. She has been commissioned by Edinburgh International Festival, Deutsches Museum and ThankYou Australia. She has performed her work across Africa, Europe and North America. She is a 2021 University of IOWA International writing residency fellow.
REGISTER
Africa Writes 2021 returns from 4 – 24 October. You can join us in celebrating the imagination, pleasure and activism within contemporary African literature either online, at 180 The Strand and the British Library. Learn more about the programme here.
