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Poems as Old Friends: Lemn Sissay, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta & Tishani Doshi
Date/Time: Friday 3 February 2023 20:30-21:30
Venue: Al Baraha II, InterContinental, Dubai Festival City
Language: English
Session No: 136
What constitutes an old friend? It can be anything from the high school friend you parted ways with after graduation or the motherland your parents told endless stories about, to simple everyday pleasures like tea, music or a good book.
Come and hear Lemn Sissay, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta and Tishani Doshi recite and discuss their own poetry pieces inspired by the 2023 theme ‘Old Friends’, and the work of other poets they admire that celebrates friendship in inspiring and refreshing ways.
Lemn Sissay OBE is a poet playwright, memoirist performer and broadcaster. Lemn has read on stage throughout the world, from the Library of Congress in the United States to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. His poems have been part of concerto performances at the Royal Albert Hall, the Apollo and the BBC Proms on numerous occasions. He has judged many literary competitions including the 2020 Booker Prize, The National Poetry Competition and The Forward Prize.
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta is the author of five poetry collections and a debut biofiction novel, Assembling Alice. She has co-edited various literary Filipino poetry anthologies for the Cordite Poetry Review and Vagabond Press. Widely awarded for her work in the Philippines, Katigbak-Lacuesta has also been the Filipino delegate to international literary festivals in Rotterdam, Medellín, San Francisco, Macau, and Kuala Lumpur.
Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, essays and fiction. Her most recent books are Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and a novel, Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and a New York Times Bestsellers Editor’s Choice. She is a visiting associate professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, and otherwise, lives in Tamil Nadu. A God at the Door, her fourth full-length collection of poems, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize 2021.
Moderator Mark Fiddes is an award-winning poet whose work has been published by Poetry Review, the London Magazine, the Irish Times, and more. Winner of the Oxford Brookes University International Prize and the Ruskin Prize, and a runner up for the Robert Graves Prize, the Bridport Prize and the UK National Poetry Competition, his debut collection The Rainbow Factory was followed by Other Saints Are Available in 2021.
As you plan your day at the Festival, please take into consideration that it takes between 30-60 mins to commute between the Intercontinental, Festival City and Mohammed Bin Rashid Library.
