Celebration of Benjamin Zephaniah

Join us for a powerful and inspiring day celebrating the life, work and legacy of Benjamin Zephaniah as part of the Brunel Creates Arts Festival.

The day will feature a series of interactive workshops bringing together students, alumni and local schools, creating space for creativity, expression and collaboration. The programme will build towards a vibrant live performance event, showcasing original work inspired by Zephaniah’s voice, energy and impact.

With opportunities to take part, connect and create, this is a celebration rooted in community, creativity and shared experience. We also hope to include a community workshop, opening the event to wider audiences beyond campus.

We look forward to welcoming you for the celebration!

THIS YEAR'S PERFORMERS INCLUDE:

Ziba Karbassi—born in Tabriz, northwestern Iran began writing poems from an early age. Her first book in Persian was published in her twenties and, since then, she has published regularly, with more than twelve books now available, both in her mother tongue and internationally. Forced to leave Iran in the early 1980s with her mother and younger sisters, she has since lived most of her life in London. She is widely regarded as one of the leading poets currently writing in Persian and, her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. Karbassi’s densely revolutionary lyrical writing achieves an intensity of space that is almost unique in contemporary poetry, melting the valencies of breath into the depths of meaning. She has performed her work widely across Europe and America. She was Chairperson of the Association of Iranian Writers in Exile, 2002 to 2004 and in 2009 she was awarded the Golden Apple Poetry Prize (Azerbaijan) and served as chair of Exiled Writers Ink from 2012 to 2014 and, in 2012, was chosen by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC, Birkbeck, University of London) as one of fifteen revolutionary poets in a worldwide survey of published writings from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. From 2019 to 2021, Karbassi was a director of the Iranian PEN Centre in Exile, and she continues to work as a committee member and editor with Exiled Writers Ink in London, always passionately and actively committing her life and work for poetry.

Henry Stone is a writer, lyricist and content creator from South London. Through lyricism, music and storytelling, he offers social commentary through poetry, short films and other visual mediums.

Wayne Holloway-Smith won The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2016 and The National Poetry Competition in 2018. He was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize for his collection Love Minus Love in 2020. His recent book, Rabbitbox was published in March this year. He currently edits The Poetry Review.