This afternoon reading celebrates poetry in Arabic and English, bringing together three distinct voices whose work spans continents, traditions, and generations. The event features Al‑Saddiq Al‑Raddi, one of Sudan’s most celebrated contemporary poets; Bryar Bajalan, writer and translator from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq; and Ola Elhassan, a Sudanese poet, curator, and electrical engineer based in London.
Al‑Raddi’s lyric poetry is known for its vivid, image‑rich imagination shaped by his childhood in Khartoum, on the banks of the Nile. He appears alongside Ola Elhassan, a powerful emerging voice whose work draws on Sudanese women’s traditions, memory, and oral storytelling, while experimenting with influences from music, mathematics, physics, and dance.
They are joined by Bryar Bajalan, co‑translator of Al‑Raddi’s recent collection A Friend’s Kitchen. Bajalan will read Al‑Raddi’s poems in English and share selected pieces from his own multilingual, cross‑regional writing.
This event is part of The Mosaic Rooms’ annual Small Press Fest (6–7 June).
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and emotional frankness of his lyrics. His poetry has always been concerned with the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Sudan and its complex history.Saddiq was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. From 2006, he was the cultural editor of Al-Sudani newspaper until he was sacked from his position for political reasons (along with 22 other colleagues) in July 2012 during the uprising against the dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. Saddiq only escaped imprisonment because, thanks to the miraculous timing of Poetry Parnassus (the world’s largest-ever gathering of international poets at which Saddiq represented Sudan), he was in the UK when a series of mass arrests took place. He successfully applied for asylum and is now living in London.
Bryar Bajalan is a writer, translator and filmmaker presently pursuing a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. His work as a translator from the Arabic and Kurdish has appeared in Ambit, Modern Poetry in Translation and on the Poetry Foundation website, and his present projects include the translation of poets displaced from Shingal during the Islamic State’s genocide of the Êzîdî and the collection of oral histories in Mosul.
Ola Elhassan is a Sudanese poet, curator, and electrical engineer in London. Sometimes her poetry experiments with and about music, mathematics, physics, and dancing. She is a resident poet and member of the Common Sound collective, and has featured on the Common Sound Spring “Compilation 22” and Raelle’s debut EP “Bloodlines.” She has performed at the Roundhouse, the Serpentine Gallery and Ake Arts Book Festival and more. You can find her poems in various international anthologies including PANK Magazine, Inkwell Journal and most recently, Before Them, We.
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