You are warmly invited to celebrate Labour of Tongues, neneh noï’s first poetry collection with readings by the author, poet Roya Shadmand, Soleil, and more!

Labour of Tongues is a document of poetry that records, but saves nothing. It asks, how to stay with pain?
This archive is build out of two channels, two voices running parallel to one another. In one an elder speaks, in the other a knot of generational fabulation.
Here, the poem and flesh serve as ushers for pain. Through imitation and declaration this archive becomes a container for disorganised storytelling, disorder, grief, translation, the loss of language, and affection.

Artist and poet Kate Paul comments:
“It makes sense to me that this kind of translation would enjoy playing with disgust, in a way that contains a lot of love. And not love in a bullshit kind of simple romance way ofc.
I think the occupying of different psychic spaces and kind of bordering them but edging between them in a way that is WELL LIVED IN.
It’s very scarcely about strangers to the two speakers - they feature but it really isn’t about them. Likewise I don’t feel it’s about me as a reader. And this is very special to me.”

❖ Roya Zahra Shadmand is a poet and performance artist from the UK, currently based in Brussels. She has studied clowning under Philippe Gaulier, is a former resident artist at The Roundhouse in Camden, and has performed at various events and festivals around the UK and Europe, including, but not limited to, Latitude Festival, Bestival and the Edinburgh Fringe. Her first poetry pamphlet, A Forest of Red, was published in December 2023 with Kitchen 3 Editions. She is currently completing a research MA at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Her research project aims to re-trace the history of Western intervention in (and catalysing of) the ongoing opiate crisis in the Middle East, as well as re-contextualise the so-called “wars” on “drugs” and “terror.”

❖ Soleil’s poetry explores and blends both ends of opposite dualities. His practice evolves across ceramics, performance, painting and film – and centers optimism in the context of race gender & disability.

❖ neneh noï is a poet based in Belgium. They approach their art as a social practice beyond authorship. They create contexts for writing/text, performance, and play to activate each other, wherein they seek the fine balance between pleasure, discomfort, disgust, and fascination. They co-organise Anonymous Poets meetings with Kate Paul and Roya Shadmand, and co-host The Scandal, an open mic’s for poets, with cris e. fidelis (next events = AU JUS 11/04 & La Balsamine 25/04).