Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Byryar Bajalan and Ola Elhassan
6 June 2026, 4pm
Join us for an afternoon of poetry readings in Arabic and English.
Bringing together distinct poetic voices and practices, this event features one of of Sudan’s most celebrated contemporary writers, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi.
The translator of his most recent publication, A Friend’s Kitchen, Bryryar Bajalan, will read Al-Raddi’s work in English, as well as selected pieces from his own prolific writings across languages and literary traditions in the region.
Co-presented with the Poetry Translation Centre.
This event is part of our annual Small Press Fest (6-7 June).
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Image: Sarona Abuaker reading at Small Press Fest, 2022. Photo by Siegrun Salmanian.
Ola Elhassan is a Sudanese poet, curator and electrical engineer based in London. Sometimes her poetry experiments with (and about) music, mathematics, physics, ritual and dance. Her hypnotic practices speaks from Zar rituals and Haqeeba poetry.
Bryar Bajalan is a writer, translator and filmmaker presently pursuing a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. His work as a translator from the Arabic and Kurdish has appeared in Ambit, Modern Poetry in Translation and on the Poetry Foundation website, and his present projects include the translation of poets displaced from Shingal during the Islamic State’s genocide of the Êzîdî and the collection of oral histories in Mosul.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. He has gained a wide audience in his native Sudan for his imaginative approach to poetry and for the delicacy and emotional frankness of his lyrics. His poetry has always been concerned with the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Sudan and its complex history.
Saddiq was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. From 2006, he was the cultural editor of Al-Sudani newspaper until he was sacked from his position for political reasons (along with 22 other colleagues) in July 2012 during the uprising against the dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. Saddiq only escaped imprisonment because, thanks to the miraculous timing of Poetry Parnassus (the world’s largest-ever gathering of international poets at which Saddiq represented Sudan), he was in the UK when a series of mass arrests took place. He successfully applied for asylum and is now living in London.
Saddiq’s first poetry collection Songs of Solitude was published in 1996 (second edition, 1999). He has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen… (1999 & 2000); all three collections were published in one volume as Saddiq’s collected poems in Cairo in 2009. Saddiq’s publications with the Poetry Translation Centre include He Tells Tales of Meroe: Poems for the Petrie Museum (2015) and his selected poems, A Monkey at The Window (2016), both translated by Atef Alshaer, Rashid El Sheikh, Sabry Hafez and Hafiz Kheir with Sarah Maguire and Mark Ford; and A Friend’s Kitchen (2023), translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook.
Saddiq was born in 1969 and grew up in Omdurman Khartoum where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. From 2006, he was the cultural editor of Al-Sudani newspaper until he was sacked from his position for political reasons (along with 22 other colleagues) in July 2012 during the uprising against the dictatorship of Omar Al-Bashir. Saddiq only escaped imprisonment because, thanks to the miraculous timing of Poetry Parnassus (the world’s largest-ever gathering of international poets at which Saddiq represented Sudan), he was in the UK when a series of mass arrests took place. He successfully applied for asylum and is now living in London.
Saddiq’s first poetry collection Songs of Solitude was published in 1996 (second edition, 1999). He has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen… (1999 & 2000); all three collections were published in one volume as Saddiq’s collected poems in Cairo in 2009. Saddiq’s publications with the Poetry Translation Centre include He Tells Tales of Meroe: Poems for the Petrie Museum (2015) and his selected poems, A Monkey at The Window (2016), both translated by Atef Alshaer, Rashid El Sheikh, Sabry Hafez and Hafiz Kheir with Sarah Maguire and Mark Ford; and A Friend’s Kitchen (2023), translated by Bryar Bajalan and Shook.
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