Join Nandana Dev Sen on Monday 27th March for an evening of poetry. Nandana will be reading from Acrobat, her translation of a selection of her late mother’s work.
A radiant collection of poetry about womanhood, intimacy, and the body politic that together evokes the arc of an ordinary life. Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s rhythmic lines explore the joys and agonies of first love, childbirth, and decay with a restless, tactile imagination, both picking apart and celebrating the rituals that make us human. When she warns “know that blood can be easily drawn by lips,” her words tune to the fierce and biting depths of language, to the “treachery that lingers on tongue tips.” At once compassionate and unsparing, conversational and symphonic, these poems tell of a rope shivering beneath an acrobat’s nimble feet or of a twisted, blood-soaked umbilical cord – they pluck the invisible threads that bind us together.
A writer, child-rights activist, and an award-winning actor, Nandana Dev Sen is the author of six children’s books, translated into more than 15 languages globally, and two collections of her translations of the poetry of her mother, Nabaneeta Dev Sen. She grew up in India, England and America, and has starred in 20 feature films from four continents (and in multiple languages). Nandana’s first book Kangaroo Kisses was selected by 320 UK nurseries as a “Book of Excellence,” and her interactive workshops have been loved, in person, by more than 30,000 young people across the world.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University (where she won the Detur Book Prize, as well as the John Harvard Scholarship and Elizabeth Agassiz Award each year) and studying filmmaking at the USC School of Cinema Television, Nandana worked as a book editor, a screenwriter, a translator, an advocate for child protection, and as Princess Jasmine in Disneyland. The winner of several Best Actress awards, the Wingword Poetry Prize, as well as the Last-Girl Champion Award for lifetime achievement in child protection, Nandana has served on numerous child-rights commissions and juries of global film festivals and international literary prizes (including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature). As an advocate and ambassador, she has represented such prominent organizations as UNICEF, Operation Smile, RAHI, Apne Aap International, and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, to fight against child abuse and to end human trafficking. Nandana is the Child Protection Ambassador for Save the Children India, a global Author Advocate for Girls’ Education for Room to Read, and a Director of the Women’s Refugee Commission, New York, where she serves on the Programs and Advocacy Committee.
This is our second event with Nandana, after such a wonderful poetry reading in 2021. We hope you will join us for an intimate evening of poetry from an inspiring woman. The event is free to attend, and we’ll have Nandana’s books available to purchase and have signed at the event. We’ll also be serving prosecco too!
This event will start at 7pm. Please feel free to arrive from 6:45pm to get seated and comfortable. No need to book a ticket, just come along and enjoy yourself!