Contemporary Art Platform's International Poetry Reading
Looking forward to our international poetry reading this Saturday.
The event is sponsored, curated, and hosted by Nada Faris. This event is a response to Netanyahu’s attack on Gaza. The lineup includes Palestinian poets, a Kuwait-Bidoon activist, a Kuwaiti mental health activist, and a Kuwaiti environmental activist, because resistance is intersectional, and poetry is healing. |
Faris will read two poems at the start of the event, then each of our poets will read for 10 minutes.
Our line-up includes:
- George Abraham
- Mona Kareem
- Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
- Rewa Zeinati
- Rawa Majdi
- AJ Saleh
- Carina Maceira
- Farah Al-Wugayan
The event will be streamed live on CAP’s YouTube page on Saturday 29 May 2021.
- Kuwait time: 6-8 PM
- US, Eastern Time: 11 AM - 1 PM
Our line-up includes:
- George Abraham
- Mona Kareem
- Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
- Rewa Zeinati
- Rawa Majdi
- AJ Saleh
- Carina Maceira
- Farah Al-Wugayan
The event will be streamed live on CAP’s YouTube page on Saturday 29 May 2021.
- Kuwait time: 6-8 PM
- US, Eastern Time: 11 AM - 1 PM
Watch Individual Recordings
George Abraham
George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian american poet and writer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Big Other Book Award, and is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and The Boston Foundation, and winner of the 2017 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational's Best Poet title. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Abraham currently teaches at Emerson College, and will be a Litowitz MFA+MA Candidate at Northwestern University in the fall. |
Mona Kareem
Mona Kareem is a Bidoon poet born in Kuwait and exiled in New York. She's the author of three poetry collections. In 2021, she became an NEA Grant-Fellow. Her most recent publication Femme Ghosts is a trilingual chapbook published by Publication Studio in Fall 2019. Her work has been translated into nine languages, and appear in Brooklyn Rail, Michigan Quarterly, Fence, Ambit, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Poetry International, PEN English, Modern Poetry in Translation, Two Lines, and Specimen. Kareem held fellowships and residencies with Princeton University, Poetry International, Arab-American National Museum, Norwich Center, and Forum Transregionale Studien. She has been a featured writer at festivals and conferences in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Seoul, Copenhagen, and the United States. |
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her first book of poems, WATER & SALT won the 2018 Washington State Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, ARAB IN NEWSLAND, winner of the 2016 Two Slyvias Prize, and LETTERS FROM THE INTERIOR, finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick chapbook award. Her essay, “Muhammads in Gaza,” won the 2020 Best of the Net Award for nonfiction. Tuffaha’s work has been published in journals including Kenyon Review Online, Southern Humanities Review, and Poets.org Poem-A-Day feature. She is currently working on a second collection of poems and a translation. |
Rewa Zeinati
Recipient of the 2019 Edward Stanley award for poetry, Rewa Zeinati is the author of the poetry chapbook, Bullets & Orchids, and the founder of the literary magazine, Sukoon. Her work can also be found in various journals and anthologies based in the US, UK, Australia and Arab-speaking regions. Originally from Lebanon, she currently considers Metro Detroit her new home. |
AJ Saleh
AJ Saleh is a Palestinian-American poet and writer living between Indiana & Kuwait with a love of everyday life. Their work is based heavily on community organization and activism, pulling from identity and the experiences it comes with. AJ is the co-founder of Kuwait Poets Society, a youth poetry collective and carries a bachelor’s degree in engineering. AJ is an enthusiast, a Libra, and one of those people who spends too long on a joke until it stops being funny. |
Farah Al Wugayan
Performance poet, lawyer and mental health advocate. She is a lover of the mystical who dances with energy and turns reality into poems. You'll find her slaying cases in court in the morning then wrapped up in her poems at night. Farah is known for taking up the challenge of writing freestyle instant poems at many events that have gained success over the past five years. She published her first poetry book titled "hi, i'll love you anyway" in March 2017. Since then, Farah has performed on stages globally, starting at Flo Vortex / London, followed by Bowery Poetry / New York, and most recently, at a competition at the Arab German Young Academy of Humanities and Sciences / Berlin, where she won first place. Farah’s poetry has always had the power to invite people to feel their truth, connect, & feel less alone. |
Carina Maceira
Carina Maceira is a 22 year old environmentalist, activist, educator and poet that calls Kuwait home. Maceira grew up in America, primarily raised by her Kuwaiti family, adding to her multicultural identity that often shows in her creative expression. Her work experiments with the complexities of identity and it’s relationship with belonging and love. You can find her poems published in Hooligan Magazine, Sukoon Magazine, The Miami Chronicles, MILE and many more. |
Rawa Majdi
Rawa Majdi, a Palestinian-American poet, community organizer, educator, and lifelong student. She is the co-host of the LCL - local - living a creative life Podcast, co-founder of the former Kuwait Poets Society, and current Poetry Editor at Unootha Magazine. When she isn't chasing down the rabbit hole of another new hobby, she's spending time with her husband, son, and cat, Bumbum. |