I bhFad igCéin (Far Afield): Cave Canem & Poetry Ireland

Join Poetry Ireland Residency Fellow, Nithy Kasa, and Cave Canem Fellow, Safia Jama at the Irish Arts Center.

Cave Canem has partnered with Poetry Ireland in its International Residencies program, I bhFad igCéin (Far Afield), to bring a poet to The City to write and experience the literary life abroad. At the end of her residency, Nithy Kasa will join Cave Canem Fellow Safia Jama in a reading at the Irish Arts Center.

Nithy Kasa is the author of Palm Wine Tapper The Boy at Jericho. Born in the Kimpese, Democratic Republic of Congo and raised in Kinshasa and in Galway, Ireland, Kasa is a member of the Dublin Writers’ Forum and has read for Poetry Ireland, RTÉ Radio’s Poetry Programme, Concern, Ranelagh Art Festival, and the Mother Tongues Festival. Her poetry has appeared in the anthologies Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (2019)and Embers of Words (2012), as well as the journals SAH JournalFlare, and A New Ulster. She received the Poetry Ireland Commission 2020, and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award 2021. An administrative worker and entrepreneur, Kasa balances life between Ireland and the DRC and is currently working on her debut poetry collection.

Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish American mother in Queens, New York. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, she has published poetry in PloughsharesBoston ReviewWorld Literature TodaySpoken Black Girl, and Poem-a-Day. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. Jama was a semifinalist in the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry and she is the author of “Notes on Resilience,” included in the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set (Akashic Books). She is a professor in the English Department of Baruch College, City University of New York.

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