The third segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in January and February under the thematic banner – Formation: Memorials, focusing on the memorialisation of people, places, and histories, through statues and monuments and through writing. We will consider memorialisation in locations including the UK, US, and Pakistan, consider renowned figures and the politics of the statues and other public monuments commemorating them, and invite you to join us for conversations, poetry readings, and writing workshops.
Wednesday 20 January 2021, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Join a writing session with Eve Makis exploring identity and the meaning of resilience, taking inspiration from seminal works by Maya Angelou. All levels welcome.
All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide and an award-winning screenplay. She’s recipient of the Young Booksellers International Book of the Year Award and the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal, her works shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She teaches fiction on the MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
Tuesday 26 January 2021, 4 pm – 5 pm
Annum Salman is a spoken word poet from Pakistan, who has undertaken her Creative Writing MA in Surrey and is currently residing in Karachi. Her book shares her experiences as Pakistani Muslim woman and a foreigner tackling mental health issues, sexism and racism. In line with the theme of memorials, Annum will be joining us live from Pakistan to read from her collection Sense Me and discuss identity, tackling racism and sexism, and her relationship with the UK and Pakistan as a Muslim woman. She will be introduced and in conversation with Ramisha Rafique, postgraduate research student at NTU.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 3 February 2021, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Slavery and Public History in the UK and US – A Conversation with Dr Jessica Moody and Professor Stephen Small. Chaired by Dr Jenny Woodley, with Purnachandra Naik.
The histories of both the UK and the USA are inextricably bound up with histories of enslavement and of the enslaved. And yet, both countries have failed to fully recognise or interrogate these pasts. Over recent months activists and campaigners have forced a reckoning with the symbols of this history, from the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, to the fall of numerous Confederate statutes in the United States. They have made headline news and provoked debate about what should be done with monuments to enslavers and what should fill the gaps in our public history.
This online event will bring together two leading scholars of public history and collective memories of slavery. Jessica Moody and Stephen Small will join us for a conversation about histories of slavery and their place in contemporary Britain and the USA.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Wednesday 17 February 2021, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Creative writing workshop inspired by controversial statues. What would a statue say if it could talk? Would it be indignant about its removal? Curse its creator? What stories could it tell you? What late night assignations has it witnessed? Come along and make things up. Express yourself about public art in a creative way.
All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.
In the second instalment of our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our November and December events, under the thematic banner – Formation: Land, focusing on land, agriculture, landscape, and place. We will consider dispossession, migration, and ways the human and land interact, and we invite you to think about recent innovative writing about how humans are connected with the living environment and our heritage.
Wednesday 18 November 2020, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Focusing on the context of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, this talk considers the ways in which settler-colonialism damages the land and peoples’ relationships to it through exploitation and policies of assimilation, dispossession, and forced relocation aimed at erasing Indigenous identity. Drawing from Lee Maracle’s novel, Celia’s Song, and from Indigenous philosophies of relationality that posit a complex system of relations between peoples and more-than-human beings (animal, plants, ecosystems), Valentina explores how restoring sustainable relationships to the Earth is crucial for establishing and maintaining peaceful relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Tuesday 8 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Interviewed by Bethan Evans, AHRC Midlands 4 Cities funded doctoral candidate at NTU.
In this event, Jenni discusses the significance of reading for understanding place (Cuba, Nigeria, the UK, and India), and some of the fascinating publishing and reading locations explored in the book. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Click here to watch via out Youtube
Wednesday 25 November 2020, 6.30 pm – 8pm
Join a session with Eve Makis exploring urban and rural landscape writing. Learn how to evoke a landscape using your senses, taking inspiration from the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Elif Shafak. All levels welcome.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide, and an award-winning screenplay. She teaches fiction on the MA Creative Writing course at Nottingham Trent University, where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
All participants will get the chance to have their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.
Wednesday 9 December, 9.30 am – 4.30 pm
Join us for a conference curated by a collective of second year NTU English students, centred around Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s The Grassling.
The title of the conference, ‘Longing to Belong’, raises questions surrounding our relationship with the term ‘belonging’. It focuses on writers from the diaspora, as we believe that their relationship with belonging is a unique and under-represented experience. Featuring three guest speakers; Eve Makis, Panya Banjoko and Helen Cousins.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Thursday 10 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm
Eve Makis will be interviewing Alex Wheatle about his recently published YA fiction book, The Cane Warriors.
A prolific writer, Alex has had success in many forms including lyrics, poetry, short stories, plays and novel writing for adults and children. His work has been influenced by Brixton, where he grew up, his Jamaican heritage, and his experiences of living in the Shirley Oaks Children’s Home. He developed a hearty reading habit during his time in prison after the Brixton riots and has never looked back. Alex’s latest Young Adult novel, The Cane Warriors, published to critical acclaim in October, is based on the true story of a slave uprising on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica in the 1700s. In 2008, Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature and later won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his book, Crongton Knights.
Alex’s life story was filmed as part of the mini-series, Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen (director of Twelve Years a Slave) and shown on BBC One last Sunday.