Blog

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.

Keats on the Underground

| by Swithun Cooper

April sees Keats featured as part of Poems on the Underground

Apples and Snakes:

This March, three artists from Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia visited the UK as part of the British Council’s Southern Africa Arts programme.

ColabNowNow, Mozambique, Oct. 2018

| by Tanya Chitunhu

Poet Tanya Chitunhu blogs about her experiences as one of the digital creatives who took part in the second edition of the ColabNowNow residency hosted by Maputo Fast Forward in Mozambique.

Majaaz Poetry Translation Workshop, Tunisia, Sept. 2018

| by Martha Sprackland

Poet and editor Martha Sprackland writes about her experiences at the Majaaz Poetry Translation Workshop in Tunsia last month. The workshop, run in collaboration with Modern Poetry in Translation magazine, brought together 5 young British poets, and 10 young poets from across the Maghreb, to translate each other’s work at a residential workshop at Villa Ma’amoura, Nabul, Tunisia.

Unwritten Poems – whose voice am I hearing?

| by Eleanor Turney

Vladimir Lucien, one of the poets involved in the Unwritten Poems project, talks about finding a human story to tell, his fascination with the weather and the nature of Caribbean participation in European wars

Unwritten Poems – telling new stories

| by Eleanor Turney

Kat Francois, one of the poets involved in the Unwritten Poems project, talks multi-cultural history, looking to the past to help the future, and telling black stories.

Unwritten Poems – "there are more stories to tell"

| by Eleanor Turney

Jay John talks to Eleanor Turney about the erasure of West Indian contributions to World War One, the importance of telling untold stories and how the global narrative had shifted since 1918

Unwritten Poems – a sense of urgency

| by Eleanor Turney

Ishion Hutchinson, one of the poets involved in the Unwritten Poems project, talks about the joy of archives, memorialising forgotten voices and the current political climate