Past event
The Poetry of Migration -- with Vahid Davar, Eleni Kefala, and Caroline Smith Festival of Languages - Free
Poetry reading by Vahid Davar
Vahid Davar will read two ekphrastic poems inspired by Ramin and Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian's ‘fluid paintings', From Sea to Dawn and If I Had Two Paths I Would Choose The Third. These paintings are moving images drawn on found footage from the media, dealing with ‘the Refugee Crisis' and the fall of the icon. Commissioned by the artists, Davar created his two poems in 2021, which accompanied their visual counterparts in the artists' exhibitions in Munich (2021), Abu Dhabi (2022), and Paris (2023).
Poetry reading by Eleni Kefala
Eleni Kefala's poetry book Direct Orient (2024) centres around a Cypriot immigrant woman who crosses the English Channel in 1973 and in Paris boards the Direct Orient (a cheaper version of the legendary Orient Express) to travel to Athens and eventually Cyprus. Direct Orient zooms in on migration, colonialism, family history, and the role of women in history, literature, and art. Set against the backdrop of Greek and world literature, the book explores, among others, the themes and textures of the Epic of Gilgamesh through Cypriot Renaissance poetry, detective fiction, Greek folk songs, film noir, and women's poetry from antiquity.
Poems on Immigration with Italian Translation from Caroline Smith
Caroline Smith will read a selection of poems from her collection The Immigration Handbook (Seren, 2016) and students from the School of Modern Languages will read the same poems in their Italian translation by Professor Paola Splendore.
The Immigration Handbook was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2016 and translated into Italian by Paola Splendore in 2020 and published by Edizioni dell'asino. The collaboration between Caroline and Paola was an outcome of the conference ‘Press Play: Creative Interventions in Research and Practice', held at the British School in Rome in March 2019 and part-funded by the University of St Andrews' Knowledge Exchange Fund.
This event is part of the Festival of Languages, organised by the University of St Andrews School of Modern Languages. All events in the Festival programme are FREE and open to the public.