Let Me Tell You What I Saw

Adnan Al-Sayegh is an Iraqi poet-in-exile renowned for his epic, Uruk’s Anthem, inspired by myth and the troubled history of Iraq in his lifetime. It is a passionate denunciation of war and violence. Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, translator and songwriter who teaches poetry at Oxford University. Her father was born in Blaenclyddach and she comes from a long line of Welsh miners who worked at Trehafod colliery in the Rhondda. She has published four full collections of poetry and two chapbooks in English and Arabic with Adnan al-Sayegh (Mulfran Press, 2013/ 14) as part of the award-winning, Arts Council-funded ‘Writing Mesopotamia’ project which aims to build bridges and foster friendships between English and Arabic-speaking communities. Her re-imagining of the Gilgamesh epic, Gilgamesh Retold, published by Carcanet in October 2018, was a New Statesman Book of the Year, a Carcanet Book of the Year and a London Review of Books ‘Book of the Week’ on publication. She is currently completing a PhD on Gilgamesh at Goldsmiths, London University. Ruba Abughaida is a writer of fiction and poetry. She has recently completed an MSt. in creative writing at Cambridge University. She is working on her first historical fiction novel and has published short stories, poetry, literary reviews and essays as well as travel writing. She won first prize for an extract from her story 'The Sirocco Winds' in the Writers and Artist’s Yearbook Historical Fiction Competition 2014 and worked with Jenny Lewis and Adnan al-Sayegh in translating poetry from English to Arabic and Arabic to English.