The Humanities Research Centre and the Freilich Project are honoured to host an evening of poetry and short films exploring the complexities of sexuality, culture, faith and identity. Ian Iqbal Rashid will be reading selections from his poetry collections as well as new writing, and screening two early short films, Surviving Sabu and Stag, with a response from Omar Sakr who will also share his poetry.

Copies of Omar Sakr’s new poetry collection The Lost Arabs will be on sale from 5:30pm.

Please join us afterwards for refreshments and an end of year celebration.

Ian Iqbal Rashid is a London-based poet, screenwriter and filmmaker, recipient of the Writer's Guild of England Award and the Aga Khan Award for Excellence in the Arts amongst other awards and nominations. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, his films have screened at festivals from Sundance to Toronto and been distributed theatrically, and he has worked widely in UK television including on the now-legendary cult hit BBC series, This Life. He is currently writing a drama series exploring the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in Canada for the CBC, and bastardising Jane Austen for a comedy series at ITV. Of Muslim Indian ancestry, he was born in Tanzania and grew up in Canada.

Omar Sakr is an award-winning poet born and raised in Western Sydney to Lebanese Muslim and Turkish Muslim migrants. He is the author of These Wild Houses (2017), a collection of poetry shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and The Lost Arabs (2019). Omar’s poems have been published in English, Arabic and Spanish, featuring most recently in Prairie Schooner, The Margins, Tinderbox, Wildness, Peril, Circulo de Poesía, Overland, Meanjin and Antic, among others. He has been anthologised in Best Australian Poems 2016 and in Contemporary AustralianPoetry, and his articles have appeared in The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Please register for the event here

This event is hosted by the Humanities Research Centre and the Freilich Project