The Speechless Freedom of Expression Tour

At the end of October, Lancaster hosted two events offered by a group of outstanding visiting poets from South East Asia centred around the ideas of the Speechless Freedom of Expression tour.

An evening of live new international poetry was held at the Nuffield Theatre on Thursday 23rd October.  The Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research additionally arranged for the poets to visit the Department of English & Creative Writing on Friday 24th October.  The below photographs were taken at this well-attended lunchtime writing and performance workshop given for the Department's Creative Writing students.

How free is free speech? Are there things that just can’t be said?  Enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the right to freedom of opinion and expression – but what does this mean in an age of international anxiety and mistrust? Speechless brings together specially commissioned poetry from six brilliant writers from across South East Asia and the UK on the theme of freedom of expression in an exceptional new multi-lingual spoken word show.  Incorporating different perspectives and experiences from Vietnam to Ireland and sexuality to on-line security, Speechless will be a night that stimulates brain-tingling debate, covering issues that define our existence.

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Featuring: Francesca Beard, Aoife Mannix, Malika Booker, Siege Malvar (PHILIPPINES),
Liu Liang Yen (TAIWAN), Da Thao Phuong (VIETNAM).  The two poets performing at the workshop were Priya K from Malaysia and Da Thao Phuong (known as Phuong) from Vietnam:

Da Thao Phuong is, at the age of 34, one of Vietnam’s best-known contemporary poets. She also works as a writer and section editor for a major daily newspaper in Vietnam. Her passion since childhood has been poetry and she took first prize at age 18 in a nationwide poetry competition organised by the National Writers’ Association and the Swedish state development agency. Since then she has read her works in Vietnamese theatres, universities, on television and national radio. Her poetry has been published in more than 20 collections and retrospectives in Vietnam.

Priya K., from Malaysia, is a final year law student and self-described closet dreamer. She is co-organiser of Project OMG! gigs in Petaling Jaya and a member of the youth theatre group The Oral Stage, both writing and starring in stage productions. She has performed her poetry at the British Council Wayang Kata events 4 and 5, and participated in the Singapore-Malaysia poetry exchange performance during the Singapore Writer's Festival in December 2007.

Phuong and Priya were visiting Lancaster with the other Speechless poets as part of a tour sponsored by Apples & Snakes and the British Council in association with English PEN.  For further information see the LitFest page on the Speechless tour.


FASS

Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, County College, Lancaster University, LA1 4YD, UK