These blog posts offer an insight into some of the projects that we’ve supported and how the British Council works with literature, including interviews with writers, diaries from international visits, and reflections on completed or on-going projects. The opinions expressed in the blog are those of the authors.
The British Council supported an exciting programme of events at Hay Festival, celebrating Shakespeare on the 400 year anniversary of his death. On Friday 3 June, Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, was in conversation with Simon Callow, David Aaronovitch and Alexa Huang for an event on Shakespeare and dissent.
Writer Kerry Young on her recent trip to Beirut for the International Writers' House, Beyt el Kottab.
For our Sonnet Exchange event at the Southbank Centre's Alchemy Festival we commissioned Sampurna Chattarji to write a poetic response to a Shakespearean Sonnet.
For our Sonnet Exchange event at Alchemy Festival this year, Next Generation poet Daljit Nagra was commissioned to write a response to a Shakespeare sonnet. He chose Sonnet 69.
For our Sonnet Exchange event at Alchemy Festival this year, Bangladeshi poet Kaiser Haq was commissioned to write a response to Shakespeare. Kaiser chose to take as his starting point Sonnet 66, 'Tired with all these, for restful death I cry'. His response is below.
In this blog post, Daljit Nagra comments on his new poem 'The Shame' which draws inspiration both from Shakespeare Sonnets and the Bollywood drama of a modern Indian marriage.
Meg Rosoff awarded the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's literature.
Workshop Facilitator Dan Tsu blogs about his experience working on our Sonnets for the Horn of Africa project in Sudan.
Workshop facilitator Dan Boyden blogs about his recent trip to Sudan on our Sonnets for the Horn of Africa project.
Filmmaker David Fitzpatrick blogs about his experience filming in Khartoum, Sudan as part of our programme Sonnets for the Horn of Africa.
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