Poetry in the Library

Join us for a celebration of East and Southeast Asian writing with Nina Mingya Powles and Khairani Barokka, who will read from their poetry collections and take questions from the audience. This will be a relaxed and informal evening with books available to buy and borrow. September is ESEA Heritage Month, and we will be celebrating and honouring people of East and Southeast Asian heritage and their contribution to our shared culture and history. Please register for your free place below. If you don't currently have a Lewisham Libraries card you can register as a guest. About the poets: ​​Nina Mingya Powles is a poet and writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, based in the UK. Her debut poetry collection, Magnolia 木蘭, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was a finalist in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She is also the author of several poetry pamphlets and zines. In 2018 she was one of three winners of the Women Poets Prize, and in 2019 won the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize. Her resulting book of essays Small Bodies of Water was published in 2021. She has also published a short food memoir, Tiny Moons (2020). Nina is a pamphlet selector for the Poetry Book Society and is on the editorial committee of Starling magazine. She has taught poetry and zinemaking workshops for a range of community organisations, schools and literary festivals including the Poetry School, Writers Practice NZ and the Museum of the Home. Nina was born in Aotearoa, partly grew up in China, and now lives in London. Khairani Barokka (b. Jakarta, 1985) is a writer, poet and artist in London. She’s a practice-based researcher, whose work centres disability justice as anti-colonial praxis. Among her honours, she was Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, the first non-British Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing, and an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow, and is currently UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation and Research Fellow at University of the Arts London. Khairani (known as Okka) was recognized in 2014 by UNFPA as one of Indonesia’s “Inspirational Young Leaders Driving Social Change", for highly prolific, pioneering international work in justice-oriented arts. Published internationally in anthologies and journals, Okka has presented work extensively, in fifteen countries, is a frequent public speaker, and has been awarded various residencies, grants and award nominations, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is author and illustrator of poetry-art book Indigenous Species, nominated for a Goldsmiths Public Engagement Award (Tilted Axis Press, 2016; Vietnamese translation out in 2018 with AJAR Press), author of poetry collection Rope (Nine Arches Press, 2017), co-editor with Ng Yi-Sheng of HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Fixi, 2016), and co-editor, with Sandra Alland and Daniel Sluman, of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press, 2017), shortlisted for a Saboteur Award for Best Anthology and a Poetry School Book of the Year. She is a member of the collective Malika's Poetry Kitchen and received a PhD by Practice in Goldsmiths’ Visual Cultures Department, as an LPDP Scholar. Her most recent commission is a large-scale digital collage and poetry series for Wellcome Collection. Her latest book, poetry collection Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches Press) was published in March 2021, and was shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.