Asha Lul Mohamud Yusufis quickly emerging as one of the most
exciting young poets living in the Somali diaspora.
Like all Somalis, Asha grew up in a culture steeped in poetry and
while she was young she started to compose her own poems. Her work
began getting published on Somali websites in 2008 and, since then,
she's rapidly garnered a great deal of praise for her ability to
infuse her poetry with fresh imagery enlivened by telling details.
Her collection The Sea-Migrations was named the Poetry Book of the
Year 2018 by The Sunday Times.
Asha came to the UK in 1990 having fled the Somali Civil War. She
now has three children and a steady job and a growing career as a
poet.
Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and currently lives in
South London with her husband and two children. Her first
collection of poetry, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998) was written
whilst she was still at school, and received an Eric Gregory Award.
It was followed by Bedtime (2002) and Look, Clare! Look!(2005),
which was made a set text on the WJEC A-level syllabus. Her fourth
collection Changeling (2011) was a Poetry Book Society
Recommendation, and her latest is Incarnation (Bloodaxe, 2017). In
2003 she won a Society of Authors travel award and an Arts Council
writer’s award. The Independent named her one of their Top Writers
Under 30.
Clare’s first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premiered at the Royal
Court Theatre, and has since been performed at the Munchner
Kammerspiele in Munich. In 2012 she co-wrote the radio play Surface
to Air with WN Herbert for BBC Radio 4. She has toured widely with
the British Council, including a residency in Beijing, and been
involved in numerous translation projects, including co-translating
The Sea-Migrations by Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf (Bloodaxe, 2017) which
received a PEN Translates award. Clare has also translated Ovid’s
Heroines (Bloodaxe, 2013), which she toured as a one-woman show
with Jaybird Live Literature.
Clare supports herself by working as an editor, journalist and
teacher. She is the new editor of Modern Poetry in Translation,
co-founded by Ted Hughes, and poetry editor for The Idler. Clare
has also co-edited an anthology for Bloodaxe with James Byrne,
entitled Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, edited
two issues of Magma poetry magazine and co-edited an issue of The
Butcher’s Dog. She has recently been a judge for the PBS Next
Generation list, Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize,
Manchester International Poetry Prize and Northern Writer’s Awards.
Her articles and reviews have been published in The Guardian, The
Independent, The TES, Critical Quarterly, Poetry London, Poetry
Review and The Dark Horse. As well as appearances on The Verb,
Woman’s Hour, Poetry Please and Newsnight Review, she has written
and presented two documentaries for television and one for radio,
‘My Male Muse’ (2007), which was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year. Clare
is a Royal Literary Fellow at Essex University and mentors for New
Writing North.
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