Jacaranda Poetry Showcase: #TwentyIn2020 (Online)

Tolu Agbelusi and Hibaq Osman, two of Jacaranda Books’ #TwentyIn2020 poets, read from and discuss their stunning new debut collections.

Agbelusi’s Locating Strongwoman is a portrait of unperformed femininity. Eschewing the stereotypical portrayal of the ‘Strong Woman’ and the even more loaded ‘Strong Black Woman’, these poems invite the reader to interrogate the protagonists and find in their stories a quiet strength.

Osman’s Where the Memory Was presents poems in flashes of memory, inviting readers into a world full of blunt feeling and delicate poetics. Ranging in theme from inter-generational pain to reckless young love and battles with illness, these poems turn memory into a living aspect of our lives.

Tolu Agbelusi is a Nigerian British, poet, playwright, performer, educator and lawyer. Shortlisted for the 2018 White Review Poetry Prize, she has also been listed as one the Best British Writers of Colour by Speaking Volumes in 2017, and was longlisted for the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017. A 2017 BBC Slam Finalist, she has performed widely and was Poet in Residence at Postman’s Park.

Hibaq Osman is a Somali writer and reader raised in West London. Her debut poetry pamphlet A Silence You Can Carry was published with Out-Spoken Press in 2015, followed by two self-published online pamphlets: the heart is a smashed bulb (2017) and CARVINGS (2019). She is a member of Octavia Poetry Collective and has a Masters in Psychiatric Anthropology#TwentyIn2020 is a ground breaking initiative which will see Jacaranda Books publishing 20 titles by 20 Black British writers in one year across adult fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The initiative is in collaboration with Words of Colour and in partnership with The London Library.

N.B. This is an online event. You will be sent a viewing link and password with your booking confirmation.