We’re very sorry to announce Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi has had to cancel his reading tomorrow. Our apologies to all who have booked to see him here. We hope to rearrange the event, please keep an eye on our website and newsletter for further information on this.

The Mosaic Rooms and The Poetry Translation Centre are pleased to present an evening with Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, one of the leading North African poets working in Arabic today. Al-Raddi will read from A Monkey at the Window, a major new collection that charts his evolution as a poet, from his Sudanese roots to his years of exile in the UK.

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman, Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. Al-Raddi is the author of four volumes of poetry in Arabic starting with Songs of Solitude in 1996. He was a poet in residence at London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in 2012; his 2015 collection He Tells Tales of Meroe emerged from his time there, and went on to be shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award. A Monkey at the Window was published in 2016 by the Poetry Translation Centre and Bloodaxe Books. He has a growing reputation as a poet of international significance and his poems have been published in the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and Poetry Review.

The Poetry Translation Centre was founded in 2004 by poet Sarah Maguire to give the best poems from Africa, Asia and Latin America a new life in the English language; to better understand and celebrate the diverse communities who have made their home in the UK; and to enrich the English poetic tradition through translation. The Poetry Translation Centre is a charity supported by Arts Council England.

Readings at this event will be in Arabic and English.