Imaginarium: Poetry Commissions 2021

As part of our response to the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference, we are delighted to have partnered with the Scottish Poetry Library and The Obsidian Foundation to commission three Black female poets to write and film new poetry which will world premiere at the festival. The poets are Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Tjawangwa Dema, and Zakia Carpenter-Hall. 

These films are part of our Imaginarium strand that presents an inquiry into the embodied experience of Blackness and being in the environment, the changing climate and the need for communion with nature as a means of healing and resistance.

About the poets

Clementine E. Burnley is a feminist migrant mother, writer and community organiser. She lives in Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in Parabola Magazine, the National Flash Fiction Anthology and The Centifictionist. She’s a 2021 Sky Arts Award Winner. She is an alumna of the Obsidian Foundation and a 2021 Edwin Morgan Second Life Grantee. Her poem-film is Paradise Engines.

Zakia Carpenter-Hall is a writer, tutor and critic. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, Magma, Wild Court, 3:AM, XR Writer’s Rebel and various visual poetry exhibitions. She was an inaugural winner of Poetry London's mentoring scheme, and her chapbook Event Horizon was published by Sampson Low. She is a 2020 Jerwood Bursary Recipient, London Library Emerging Writer and was shortlisted for The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Her poetry reviews and essays have been published by Poetry London, the Poetry School, Wild Court and in three consecutive issues of The Poetry Review. She’s the editorial intern for Magma 82, Obsidian. Her poem-film is Human Ecologies.

Tjawangwa Dema is the author of The Careless Seamstress, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize. Her chapbook Mandible was published as part of the African Poetry Book Fund’s New Generation Poets box set series. TJ is an alumna of the HarperCollins Author Academy, an honorary fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and sits on multiple poetry festival/institute boards.

She holds an MA in Creative Writing and has given readings and facilitated workshops in over twenty countries. Tjawangwa has worked collaboratively with poets, scholars, dancers, theatre and filmmakers. Her poetry and essays on poetic pedagogies have been featured or are forthcoming in various publications, most recently New Daughters of Africa, Botswana Women Write and the PMLA. She is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol and co-produces the Africa Writes – Bristol festival. Tjawangwa’s chapbook, an/other pastoral, exploring the environment and ethnicity and is forthcoming from No Bindings in 2022. Her poem-film is Cadastral: The Black Girl Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.