From the Oxford Brookes University News Archive
21/06/2013
Kate Clanchy, Oxford City Poet and Brookes Fellow, has been working with First Story at Oxford Spires Academy, and the remarkable anthology produced with students from the school was launched on the 7 June 2013. One of the students featured in the anthology, Room, is Azfa Ali, who recently won the £3,000 Tower Poetry Prize. Azfa’s poem, Origins, was chosen ahead of 613 others. In an article for First Story, Azfa wrote that:
Coming from a culturally rich background, I have many stories to tell. As a refugee, my mind is packed with memories of Africa, and being raised in Glasgow means I have a strong Scottish identity. However, the power that stories can have came to me through my father’s mesmerising ways of storytelling. I was captivated by his dramatic performances and almost poetical narrations that swayed my mind from the poverty I was witnessing outside my bedroom window, to a strange, more comfortable land that seemed oddly familiar. But this is where my stories, memories, pains, joys and laughter stayed. Locked in a box entitled the past, buried underneath the sand on a far-away land where my parents felt was a much safer place, and encouraged me to move forward, and pursue an academic, scientific career.
• Show on homepage: FALSE• Top story: FALSE
• Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
• School of English and Modern Languages
• Headington Campus
• Poetry centre
© Oxford Brookes University and its associates.All rights reserved.