Migration and Memory

Learn what the future of Scottish poetry looks like: this double bill showcases Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, two joint winners of the 2024 James Berry Poetry Prize, whose wide-ranging debut collections are newly out with Bloodaxe.

In Even the Trees, shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, Roshni asks what can be seen, named or remembered. From Scotland to Guyana, the poems explore the porous boundary between the past and the present, and how mind and body are permanently altered by migration and memory.

In Belling the Leopard, Clementine asks what remains after once-familiar places and people have gone. Criss-crossing the Atlantic, her poems see the voices of Caribbean returnees to the west African coast mingle with those of west African recaptives, German missionaries, and kidnappers.

Chaired by Arusa Qureshi