Wander

Congratulations to everyone selected for the Wander 2025 open call competition! Thank you to everyone who sent in poems  and I really hope next year to have this again and to offer this space.So here are the poems selected:Alienated by Mustafa NoahHow To Be by Sanjar QiamThe Dilemma by Hiba RasheedWind Blows Sudden by B3dmah Caged Bird by Shazaيحتلك الشيطان (Occupied By The Devil) by Hend JoudaProduced by Bairbre Flood - www.bairbreflood.orgFunded by The Arts Council of IrelandWander is a podcast that gives spaces to poets with lived experience of seeking refuge, migration or exile.

Hend Jouda is a writer from Gaza who’s published several poetry collections in Arabic: ‘Someone Always Leaves’, ‘No Sugar in the City’ and ‘Finger Survived’ and also, earlier this year, a collection in Arabic and French called ‘A Poet In Times Of War’. She's the winner of the Wander open call 2025 with her poem 'Occupied By The Devil'.Hend was born in Al-Bureij refugee camp in Gaza which has been attacked dozens of times by Israel, including a bombing on May 7th of a school where displaced people were seeking shelter -  over 33 Palestinian civilians were murdered. The school was targeted twice.Whatever you can do to stop this genocide, do it. Free Palestine. Saoirse don Phalaistin.Produced by Bairbre Flood - all episodes at www.bairbreflood.orgWith thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support.

Youth project worker, poet, and visual artist, Fionnuala O'Connell has worked for many years to support young people through activities and capacity building.She reads her poems, ‘I'm Sorry’, ‘Mother Tongue’ and 'Article 6’ (inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) -'You can't eat your rights. You can't hold your rights on top of you to keep you warm or shaded from the sun. You can't wrap your rights around you when your parents have died.'We talk about her mother in Liberia and how she writes about what she sees happening in the world right now.'You see how things are landing, you can see the other side of things in real time and sometimes I find that kind of a bit difficult to deal with because it brings up issues of justice and equality and equity and poverty.'And she emphasises the importance of empathy and care in political poetry.'I think a lot of the time I try to just see the person, see the picture. Picture what's happening in the most simplest form. To connect to what's happening.'With thanks to the⁠ ⁠Arts Council of Ireland⁠⁠ for funding support.Produced by Bairbre Flood : ⁠@bairbreflood⁠ // ⁠⁠bairbreflood.org⁠⁠

Poet and youth worker Dean Oke studied Community Development and Social Policy, and has a postgrad in youth work and his poetry reflects this interest in community issues and social justice. He’s an emerging poet with a strong social conscience and an advocate for youth voices. We talk about whether there’s enough room for young people’s voices in literary spaces right now, the importance of spaces like the YMCA and Sauti in Cork, and what the future could look like in this regard. Dean also explains the importance of his faith in his life and in his writing, and reads several of his poems, including  ‘26 And Feeling Awkward’ and ‘Hard Times’. Thank you Dean for being so open and articulate about mental health struggles, I’m sure a lot of people will relate to what you’re saying. https://www.instagram.com/deanstonyoke/Thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support and thank you for listening!Produced by @bairbreflood //

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan is a writer, performer, and arts consultant from India living in Ireland. Her work's been published by Dedalus Press, Lifeboat Press, Little Island, Poetry Ireland, Banshee, and The Stinging Fly amongst others. She's been the recipient of multiple Arts Council Awards, one of which supported her being the 2023 Writer in Residence for the Institute of Physics. In 2024 she was selected as a Goethe-Institute Studio Quantum Artist in Residence, and is currently under commission with Skein Press as part of the Play It Forward Fellowship. We talk about her very brief AI experiment with poetry, how her sense of Irishness has developed since we last spoke, her participation in 'Queering The Green' , observations about queer migrant space in literature in Ireland, her recent discovery she's AuDHD + more.And she reads several of her beautiful poems for us.You can check her website - https://www.chandrika.ie/ and her instagram: @chandrikanm.art  Queering The Green, edited by Paul Maddern, and published by Lifeboat Press.‘Mapping the Depths of Us: a pamphlet of physics poems’ by Chandrika - which you can download for free.  The anthology of essays by autistic Irish writers that Chandrika also wrote for - Wired Our Own Way published by New Island Press. Wander is produced by Bairbre Flood (@bairbreflood) with thanks to funding from the Arts Council of Ireland.