Description
This powerful session explores poetry as an act of resistance and a voice for the voiceless. At its heart are four towering literary figures: Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Pablo Neruda, Mahmoud Darwish, and Nizar Qabbani, whose words transcended borders and became rallying cries for justice, dignity, and freedom.
Faiz and Neruda were known friends and fellow travellers in the international struggle for peace and justice. Darwish and Faiz were also dear friends and shared a poetic kinship. Qabbani paralleled Faiz in his fusion of love and politics, turning verse into a form of protest.
Despite writing in different languages of Urdu, Spanish, and Arabic, these poets are bound by a common ethos: that poetry can confront power, nurture memory, and awaken hope. Their legacies speak across borders and generations, inviting us to consider how language and resistance remain intertwined.
Join us for a rich conversation on poetry’s enduring power to inspire change.
Please note, this event time has updated from the printed programme.
About the Speakers
Prof. Amina Yaqin
Amina Yaqin is Professor in World and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Exeter. She has published on selected topics related to twentieth century Urdu and English literature, gender, sexuality, feminism, South Asian culture and Muslim communities. She is the author of Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing, co-author (with Peter Morey) of Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 and co-editor of Contesting Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim prejudice in Media, Culture and Politics, Muslims, Trust and Multiculturalism: New Directions, Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing. Currently, she is co-investigator of a UKRI Arts and Humanities funded project, Empathy, Narrative and Cultural Values. This project explores cultural values in relation to education and health narratives in the West Midlands amongst South Asian Muslim communities. Her commentary and interviews have been aired by the BBC, SkyNews, EuroNews, TRT World, Indus News and Pakistan Television Network. She has written for The National UAE, The Times Higher Education UK, the British Film Institute, The Conversation, The Friday Times, Daily Pioneer. She is Co-Editor in Chief of Critical Pakistan Studies published by Cambridge University Press and Founding Co-Editor of the book series Global Textualities: Multicultural and Transcultural Narratives published by Manchester University Press.
Alexandra Pringle
Alexandra joined Bloomsbury in 1999 and was Editor-in-Chief for 20 years. Her list of Nobel, Booker, Women’s Prize-winning and bestselling authors includes Richard Ford, Esther Freud, Elizabeth Gilbert, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Madeline Miller, Ann Patchett, George Saunders, Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Soueif and Patti Smith. She is on the Advisory Board of the Bradford Literature Festival, a Patron of Index on Censorship, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor at the Centre for Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan Festival. She is writing a memoir, Caravan, to be published in the UK and US in 2027.
About the Chair
Remona Aly
Remona Aly is a journalist and broadcaster. She writes for The Guardian, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought and a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Something Understood. She is also an editor and podcast host for various platforms.
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