Wander

Congratulations to everyone selected for the Wander 2025 open call competition! Thank you to everyone who sent in poems  and I really hope next year to have this again and to offer this space. So here are the poems selected: Alienated by Mustafa Noah How To Be by Sanjar Qiam The Dilemma by Hiba Rasheed Wind Blows Sudden by B3dmah   Caged Bird by Shaza يحتلك الشيطان (Occupied By The Devil) by Hend...

Hend Jouda  is a writer from Gaza who’s published several poetry collections in Arabic: ‘Someone Always Leaves’, ‘No Sugar in the City’ and ‘Finger Survived’ and also, earlier this year, a collection in Arabic and French called ‘A Poet In Times Of War’. She's the winner of the Wander open call 2025 with her poem 'Occupied By The Devil'. Hend was born in Al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza w...

Youth project worker, poet, and visual artist, Fionnuala O'Connell has worked for many years to support young people through activities and capacity building. She reads her poems, ‘I'm Sorry’, ‘Mother Tongue’ and 'Article 6’ (inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) - 'You can't eat your rights. You can't hold your rights on top of you to keep you warm or s...

Poet and youth worker Dean Oke studied Community Development and Social Policy, and has a postgrad in youth work and his poetry reflects this interest in community issues and social justice.  He’s an emerging poet with a strong social conscience and an advocate for youth voices.  We talk about whether there’s enough room for young people’s voices in literary spaces right now, the importance of spa...

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is a writer, performer, and arts consultant from India living in Ireland. Her work's been published by Dedalus Press, Lifeboat Press, Little Island, Poetry Ireland, Banshee, and The Stinging Fly amongst others.  She's been the recipient of multiple Arts Council Awards, one of which supported her being the 2023 Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics. In 2...

Amano is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Ireland and Japan. Her practice includes sean-nós, vocal improvisation and folk storytelling. She’s working to de-colonise the Irish language through music, and writes beautiful, evocative and often politically charged poetry and spoken word. She reads her poem, 'Underpass 6' and we've a lovely talk about sean-nós singing, the everyday...

In this special Poetry Day episode, Lavie Olupona reads her poems and we talk about being a young writer in Ireland today, setting up the new magazine Blaithi ('Little Flower' in Irish) and how her Nigerian and Traveller ethnicity influences her writing.  Wander, produced by Bairbre Flood, gives space to poets with lived experience of exile and is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. www...

Palestinian-American poet, journalist, teacher and activist Noor Hindi's debut poetry collection  Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow published by Haymarket Books, was an honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award.  She reads us several  poems from this collection  - ‘Palestine’, ‘Breaking News’, ‘Swearing Allegiance’. And ‘A Day, A Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accide...

Welcome back to this new season of Wander. This year we’ve got a fantastic lineup - and for the first time including Traveller poets. For those outside of Ireland, Travellers are the indigenous people of Ireland. They are a distinct ethnic minority with their own culture, language and traditions. In the 1960’s the Irish government brought in a series of laws that tried to destroy their way of life...

Racism in Greece, Mahmoud Darwish, normalising pushbacks and genocide, writing as witness, collective liberation, Moody reads his poem ‘Borders’ and Mustafa reads his ‘ Kanoon’ (‘ كانون’) - from the ⁠ Boat Arts Centre⁠ again in Kypseli, Athens. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and produced by Bairbre Flood .

Sauti, 'voice for the voiceless' in Swahili, uses art and music to express themselves and to challenge racism in Ireland. They held the second Youth Anti-Racism Summit in Cork City Hall in 2024 and organized ‘Riot Against Racism’ to bring together many different performers and artists to tackle racism. ‘Racism we’re gonna swing it out’ - Diamond Thanks to the fantastic young people of Saut...

Good Day Cork was created in 2018 with a mission to amplify Cork's unrepresented voices. The first event they held was Many Tongues of Cork in March 2019. Many Tongues is a multilingual prose and poetry gathering that recognises Cork's intercultural identity. And the aim of the event is to help people understand different cultures by using the sounds of the languages spoken by her people....

Olha Matso has performed at poetry readings and spoken word events at the Winding Stair Bookshop and Vicar St. (as part of the Red Cross/Ukrainian Action Ireland event in 2022) and others throughout Ireland.  She’s created poetry videos on her youtube channel and was recently commissioned by artist Varvara Shavrova for a poetry reading at the launching of an installation at the Photo Museum Irelan...

'So I wanted to bring Syria back to life, the Syria that I fell in love with before war. And that's what I wanted to do. That's what I did in the book. Like I talk about food, my grandma's cooking, the music, scenery, the literature, the books, the love scenes, the love chapters where I fall in love with my husband. And I wanted to bring that to life. So in the book, the war is jus...

Continuing on with the African Youth Artistic Poetry poets from Dzaleka in Malawi, I’m delighted to have Kenny Mujago, Mirielle Abedi, Eagle, and Harry Rama as my guests today. 'A lot of my poems are advocating for Africa and refugees.' - Harry Rama Kenny Mujago, reads an extract from his story, ‘A Snack From The Corner Street’ about the myriad connections food like chapati creates. Miriel...

Charles Lipanda Matenga is a poet and activist and founder of AYAP - African Youth Artistic Poetry . His poems have been published in the anthology ‘Our Voices Are Gathering’ in 2023 and ‘Being A Refugee Wasn’t A Choice’ due out later this year. 'Our flag is dying for you have failed to protect your mother Congo. You brought war instead of peace. When will you stop grinding and crushing us? We...

We talk about de-colonialising beauty standards, writing as a lifeline, experiencing the world through the eyes of her daughter, and 'setting a platform where things that we’re uncomfortable with discussing are being discussed'. ⁠Neo Florence Gilson⁠ is a poet, writer and storyteller from South Africa. In 2021, she was awarded the ⁠Play it Forward Fellowship⁠ with Skein Press. Her writing...

Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul has published several works of poetry, including 'Hunter of Daffodils', 'Land of the Sad Passiflora', 'Verses The Poems Forgot With Me', 'Where is my Mom?' and 'A Letter From The Last Man'. His poems have won several awards and appeared worldwide in Arabic publications and translated into many languages. 'That poem was wri...

Since October 7th, Israel has killed at least thirteen Palestinian poets and writers in Gaza. One of the most renowned is Saleem Al-Naffar. Throughout his life and career he advocated for peaceful resistance and documented the Palestinian struggle to survive. Hamas’ actions on October 7th and their refusal to hand over the hostages were despicable actions by a corrupt terrorist organisation. But H...

My guests this week: Caleb, Wealth, Angel, Gregory, Daphne, Edwin, Diamond, Nicosha and Promise - some of the inspiring young people ⁠ Raphael Olympio⁠ works as a youth mentor with the Cork Migrant Centre (who featured last episode). I recorded this a couple of months ago so the Anti-Racism Summit we talk about was going to be on at the end of May, and it’s interesting to hear how they were all pr...

Raphael Olympio, aka Olympio, is an immensely talented rapper and spoken word artist from Cork who was born in Togo, West Africa. He grew up in a Direct Provision Centre and feels inspired to motivate others who come from different parts of Africa and other countries across the world - and is a youth mentor with the Cork Migrant Centre .  Olympio has performed at UBUNTU: Local is Global (a CIPHER...

This week I’m talking to Iraqi poet, Majed Mujed, who’s lived in Ireland since 2015. One of the founders of the Iraqi House of Poetry, he worked as a journalist and publisher in the Iraqi cultural press for twenty years. He’s published five collections of poetry in Arabic and his first book to be published in Ireland, ‘ The Book of Trivialities ’ is out now, published by Skein Press. In 2021, he w...

Tanya is another member of ‘Write to Life’ – the creative writing and performance group of Freedom from Torture (established in 1997, the longest-running refugee-writing group in Britain, and the only one specifically for survivors of torture.) She explains what writing means to her, how it helps the healing process – and she reads some of her work: her piece ‘Surviving Covid – and then the brook...

Nalougo is a member of a creative writing and performance group with Freedom From Torture. ‘Write To Life’ is the longest-running refugee-writing group in the UK, and the only one specifically for survivors of torture. They’ve collaborated with many galleries and museums, have produced zines , and have created several projects including one called the   alphabet of poverty which explores the many...

Poet and playwright, Nandi Jola, lived in South Africa under the apartheid regime until she was 21, when she moved to Northern Ireland. She’s a Rachel Baptiste 2022 Programme recipient at Smock Alley Theatre. A creative writing facilitator for Ulster University ‘Books Beyond Boundaries’, and a commissioned poet for Poetry Jukebox and Impermanence Way Archive Project 2022.   Her play “The Journey”,...