Language and Poetry, pt 2

CELCE is delighted to announce the second of our two workshops on poetry and nature. With poetry from around the globe, the event features poetry reading and discussions by Martín Veiga (Galician poetry), Tim Thurston (Tibetan poetry). Mike Edwards (poetry from Australia), Sam Liebhaber (Mehri poetry, Yemen, including The Battle of ʿAḳḳebōt), Mary Mulholland (Carribean), Ricardo Fidel Michue Bendezú (Latin American environmental songs), and Rob Miles (British English).

Second poetry and nature event flyer

About the speakers

Martin Veiga has published six award-winning poetry collections in Galician, most recently Diario de Crosses Green (2016; translated into English in 2018), a ganancia e a perda (2020), and the bilingual Galician-English anthology Alfaias na lama: poesía selecta 1990-2020 / Jewels in the Mud: Selected Poems 1990-2020 (2020). He is a lecturer in Hispanic Studies at University College Cork, where he is also the director of the Irish Centre for Galician Studies. He is the co-editor of Galicia 21. Journal of Contemporary Galician Studies and has published widely in research fields such as modern and contemporary Galician and Irish poetry, literary translation and travel writing in the Hispanic world. He is currently working on the edition of an anthology of Irish and Galician ecopoetry (forthcoming 2021). In 2017 he was awarded the Pedrón de Honra Prize for his trajectory in the international promotion of Galician culture.

Tim Thurston is a lecturer in Chinese Studies and his research focuses on traditional and emergent oral cultures of ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China, with an emphasis on Tibetans. With previous research focusing on Tibetan speechmaking and sketch comedy performances, his current research seeks to theorize “cultural sustainability” as a response to some of the drawbacks of intangible cultural heritage safeguarding.

Mike Edwards: (PhD) is Chief Listening Officer (CLO) at Sound Matters - Listening for a Better World! He has over 25 years’ experience as a sustainability consultant and climate change advisor. Having worked with numerous NGOs, Mike was appointed Climate Change Advisor to The Elders Foundation, where he provided expert advice to the likes of Gro Harlem Brundtland, Kofi Annan and President Jimmy Carter. Not only does he have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the current threats to both people and planet, he also has a unique ability to communicate these issues across all levels of business and academia. In addition to his work at Sound Matters, Mike is an Adjunct Professor at Hult International Business School, an Honorary Research Associate at University College London (UCL) and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS). Mike is also a musician and is considered one of the world’s most accomplished contemporary didgeridoo players having performed at festivals around the world and released four CDs to international acclaim.

Sam Liebhaber is an Associate Professor of Arabic at Middlebury College in Vermont, USA.  He received his M.A. degree in Comparative Semitics (2000) and his Ph.D. in Arabic Literature from the University of California, Berkeley (2007).  Starting in 1997, Dr. Liebhaber has undertaken several periods of Arabic language study and research in Yemen and has lived in Sana’a, Aden, and al-Ghaydha. Working with poet Bob Holman, Dr. Liebhaber published a translation of Dr. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Maqāliḥ’s Kitāb Ṣanʿāʾ (The Book of Sana’a, 2004) and a translation of the first written collection of poetry in the endangered Mahri language of eastern Yemen, The Dīwān of Ḥājj Dākōn (American Institute for Yemeni Studies, 2011). Dr. Liebhaber has recently published a digital exhibit of Mahri poetry, When Melodies Gather (Stanford University Press, 2018), that invites online visitors to explore the process of poetic creation in the primarily oral setting of al-Mahra (whenmelodiesgather.org

Mary Mulholland is a London-based poet with poems published in a range of magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Perverse, London Grip, Ambit and Under the Radar. She was shortlisted in the Trim, Aesthetica and Buzzwords, commended in Winchester and Artlyst competitions and twice been a winner in the Poetry Society Members Competitions. She has a MA in Poetry from Newcastle/The Poetry School and co-edits The Alchemy Spoon (www.alchemyspoon.org)

[ www.marymulholland.co.uk   @marymulhol]

Ricardo Michue-Bendezu: is Peruvian Teaching Fellow of Spanish or Castillian. First degree in Psychology in Barcelona. Spain. Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. Member ad-honorem of 'Comunidad Rimanacuy', a London a non profit group to protect and expand the Quechua language and spread endangered languages. I have over 27 years’ experience as a Teacher of Spanish for undergraduates for all levels. I also play football, still, on Wednesday evenings with some colleagues from MSB.

Rob Miles is from Devon and he lives in Leeds. He studied languages, literature and culture at the University of Leeds, completing a PhD on the cinema of Víctor Erice. He has published in academic journals on Erice, Pablo Picasso, Luis Buñuel, Diego Velázquez, Seamus Heaney and Pura López Colomé. Rob has taught translation, Hispanic and visual-cultural studies at the universities of Leeds, Portsmouth, Hull and Liverpool, where he currently teaches film and is a research affiliate for the AHRC project MVRColombia.

Rob’s poetry in English has appeared widely in anthologies and magazines such as Ambit, Poetry Wales, Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Stand, South Bank Poetry, The New European, York Literary Review, The Anthology of Age and The Anthology of Love (both the Emma Press), Remembering Oluwale, and Yorkshire Poetry (both Valley Press), Live Canon, and in two of the Ten Poems series by Candlestick Press. His poems have featured on postcards and buses, have been set to music by postgraduate students at Leeds Conservatoire and in the annual Leeds Lieder event, and one was selected to be offered to museums nationally for display with ancestral remains.

Rob has won various competitions including the Philip Larkin Prize, judged by Don Paterson, the Resurgence International Ecopoetry Prize, judged by Imtiaz Dharker and Jo Shapcott, and the Poets & Players Prize, judged by Sinéad Morrissey. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry News, One Hand Clapping, 14 Magazine, Mediterranean Poetry, The American Journal of Poetry, and Australian Book Review.