Environments, Bodies and Archives

Poetry and Conversation with Tjawangwa Dema and Louisa Adjoa Parker

Join us for an electric evening of poetry with two critically acclaimed female poets: Tjawangwa Dema and Louisa Adjoa Parker. Each poet will perform and read from their work, before being in conversation about their writing craft and poetry as archive. Through both dialogue and the sharing of work, Dema and Parker will explore mutual preoccupations with nature and landscape, Blackness and gender.

This event has been organised by University of Exeter’s Department of English and Film, in partnership with the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.

Tjawangwa Dema is a Bristol-based Motswana poet, educator and arts administrator. Her collection The Careless Seamstress won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. Her chapbook Mandible was selected for the African Poetry Book Fund’s New-Generation African Poets series. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and has given readings and taught workshops in over twenty countries. Her poems have been translated into languages including Spanish, Chinese, German and Swedish. In 2019 she gave the Ohio University African Studies Spring Lecture and co-produced the Africa Writes – Bristol festival.

Louisa Adjoa Parker writes poetry, fiction and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) history. She is of English and Ghanaian heritage and has lived in the south west for most of her life. Her first poetry collection Salt-sweat and Tears, and pamphlet Blinking in the Light, were published by Cinnamon Press. Her new collection, How to wear a skin, is shortly to be published by Indigo Dreams. Louisa’s poetry and prose has been published and performed widely, and she has been highly commended by the Forward Prize and shortlisted by the Bridport Prize. She was recently the first ever writer-in-residence at Exeter’s Custom House.

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Image Credits

Tjawangwa Dema, Photography by Petra Rolinec / 8ties baby

Louisa Adjoa Parker, Photography by Robert Golden

Venue: Exeter Phoenix, Studio 74