Free the Word! Events at Poetry Parnassus – Wednesday 27th June

10:00 – 11:00am
PEN International Breakfast – An introduction to PEN’s work worldwide
The Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer
FREE

An opportunity to learn more about PEN’s role in promoting literature and defending free expression with a chance to network and learn more about the issues that affect writers around the world.

Speakers: Laura McVeigh, Heather Norman Soderlind, Zarganar

11:30pm – 12:30pm
Free The Word!: Zones of Conflict – Poets Caught in Global Crisis
The Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer
FREE

An interactive session involving poetry readings, personal narratives and debate on the issues faced by poets caught in national and international conflicts, addressing the expectations placed on poets and writers to act as ‘spokespeople’ in times of crisis, and the tensions such expectations may create, the impact of wide scale trauma on the urge to write, the question of whether poetry can provide a suitable form of ‘resistance’, and the role of the poet in national reconciliation.

Speakers: Adisa Basic, Rafeef Ziadeh, Minoli Salgado
Chair – Laura McVeigh, Executive Director, PEN International

1:00pm – 2:00pm
Free The Word!: Exile and Audience
The Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer
FREE

A session bringing together a diversity of writers working in ‘dislocation’ from their native countries, either by choice or through forced exile. This session hopes to explore, through readings, spoken word and discussion, some of the issues facing poets who have relocated, both in terms of personal experience and poetic style. This session also aims to explore how the dual pressure to remain faithful to ones heritage, while embracing the present situation, influences poetry and poets.

Speakers: Jack Mapanje, Syl Cheney Coker, Iman Mersal, Kosal Khiev, Mir Mahfuz Ali
Chair – Heather Norman Soderlind, Deputy Director, English PEN

2:30pm – 3:30pm
Free The Word!: Speechless: Minority languages, marginalised voices
The Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer
FREE

A discussion bringing together writers working in marginalised languages, as well as academics in the area of linguistic human rights, to examine issues around linguistic diversity, multilingualism and language death. Will explore whether minority literatures can continue to flourish in the face of ever increasing globalisation, and why linguistic heritage matters to writers now more than ever.

Speakers: David Shook, Craig Santos Perez, Nii Parkes
Chair – Nicholas Ostler, Chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages

4pm – 5pm
Free the Word!: I Am Not my Country: (Anti-)nationalism, borders and identity
The Front Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer
FREE

This debate will address the problems associated with positioning poets as ‘national laureates’. A diversity of poets and leading thinkers will discuss the impacts and potential pressures of aligning poetry and nationhood: Should poets be expected to adopt the mantle of national representation and does this make for creative freedom or limitation? How do borders inform our perspective on poetry as readers? This session also aims to probe the concepts of nationalism / antinationalism and examine the tensions between public and private in contemporary poetry.

Speakers: John Kinsella, Jo Shapcott, Kapka Kassabova, Nikola Madzirov, Shailja Patel, Imtiaz Dharker
Chair – Sir Andrew Motion, Former Poet Laureate

For a full list of all events taking place during Poetry Parnassus see here.

For more information contact Paul Finegan at paul.finegan@pen-international.org