Exploring the Cypriot Identity

A panel discussion on identity-based issues as experienced on Cyprus and within the diaspora, through the lens of poetry and literature.

Register on Eventbrite using: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exploring-the-cypriot-identity-tickets-139746855607

Note: the Zoom link for this event will be circulated to event registrants the day of, February 12.

Description

A panel discussion on identity-based issues as experienced on Cyprus and within the diaspora, through the lens of poetry and literature. The discussion will be moderated by Arianna Koudounas of Peaceful Poetry of Cyprus and will feature the following panelists:

• Anthony Anaxagorou is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator and author of the poetry collection, After the Formalities.

• Dr. Bahriye Kemal is a Lecturer in Contemporary and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent and author of Writing Cyprus: Postcolonial and Partitioned Literatures of Place and Space.

• Daniele Nunziata is a Lecturer at St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford and author of Colonial and Postcolonial Cyprus: Transportal Literatures of Empire, Nationalism, and Sectarianism.

Structure

The hour-long panel will be followed by 20 minutes of Q&A with the audience, and will conclude with a poetry reading from each panelist.

About the Panel

Anthony Anaxagorou is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His second collection After the Formalities is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S Eliot Prize. It was also a Telegraph and Guardian poetry book of the year. He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction. In 2019 he was made an honorary fellow of the University of Roehampton. Anaxagorou is artistic director of Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night held at London’s Southbank Centre, and publisher of Out-Spoken Press.

Dr. Bahriye Kemal is a Lecturer in Contemporary and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. She has published Writing Cyprus: Postcolonial and Partitioned Literatures of Place and Space (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literature, 2019), and co-edited Nicosia Beyond Barriers: Voices from a Divided City (Saqi, 2019) and Visa Stories: Experiences between Law and Migration (2013). She is currently writing a book and working on various interrelated projects on the postcolonial East Mediterranean, with focus on literature and arts from Cyprus, Palestine, Syria and beyond.

Dr. Daniele Nunziata is a Lecturer in English at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford where he delivers lectures, seminars and tutorials on nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century literature. . Nunziata is the author of Colonial and Postcolonial Cyprus: Transportal Literatures of Empire, Nationalism, and Sectarianism. His primary research concerns literature from the Eastern Mediterranean (the Middle East) with a focus on Cypriot travel writing before and after its independence from the British Empire. His publications and conference papers concern this context and other aspects of postcolonial, comparative, and world literature studies.

Arianna Koudounas is the founder of Peaceful Poetry of Cyprus, a bi-communal, trilingual poetry project to foster healing and connection between all Cypriots. Koudounas was formerly the editor of the New York University Journal on Human Rights, where she published Kyrenia Revisited. She is a regional transportation planner at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and a lecturer in the Master’s of Urban and Regional Planning program at Georgetown University.

Event Etiquette

Racism and hate speech of any type will not be tolerated during this event.