Ignota Hosts: ‘Spells’ Poets
On Halloween, 31 October 2020, Rachael Allen, Bhanu Kapil, Daisy Lafarge, Hoa Nguyen, Nisha Ramayya and Rebecca Tamás joined Ignota to celebrate the anniversary of the publication of Spells: 21st-Century Occult Poetry. With readings of poetry, prose and the tarot, this event marked the start of the darker half of the year and Ignota’s second birthday, and coincided with the publication of Life Without Air (Granta) by Daisy Lafarge and Strangers by Rebecca Tamás (Makina Books).
Exploring our intimate, ecological and other-than-human interconnections, Life Without Air and Strangers consider the delicacy and urgency of being in right relationship with the cosmos, the spirits and the other.
Rachael Allen’s first collection of poems, KINGDOMLAND, is published by Faber & Faber. She is the co-author of a number of collaborative artists’ books, including Nights of Poor Sleep with Marie Jacotey, published by Prototype, and Almost One. Say Again! with JocJonJosch, published by Slimvolume. She is the recipient of a Northern Writers Award and an Eric Gregory award. She hosts the Faber Poetry Podcast, is the poetry editor for Granta magazine and Granta books, and is currently an Anthony Burgess fellow at Manchester University.
Bhanu Kapil is a poet and an artist by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. Her most recent books are How To Wash A Heart (Pavillion Poetry, 2020) and a new edition of Incubation: A Space for Monsters (Kelsey Street Press, 2020). She is also the author of Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2016), Schizophrene (Nightboat Books, 2011), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), and The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001). In 2020, Kapil received the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry from Yale University and the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry from the Society of Authors.
Daisy Lafarge’s first poetry collection, Life Without Air, is published by Granta. Her pamphlets include understudies for air (Sad Press, 2017) and capriccio (SPAM Press, 2019). She has received an Eric Gregory Award, and a Betty Trask Award for Paul, a novel forthcoming from Granta in 2021. Daisy is currently working on Lovebug – a book about infection and intimacy – at the University of Glasgow.
Born in the Mekong Delta, Hoa Nguyen was raised and educated in the United States and has lived in Canada since 2011. Recognized with a 2019 Neustadt International Prize for Literature nomination and Pushcart Prize, Hoa is the author of several books including As Long As Trees Last, Red Juice, Violet Energy Ingots, and A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure forthcoming from Wave Books in April 2021. Hoa teaches for Miami University’s low residency MFA program, in the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College, and as associated faculty for University of Guelph
Nisha Ramayya grew up in Glasgow, and is now based in London. She is a poet and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London. Her pamphlets include Notes on Sanskrit, Correspondences, and In Me the Juncture, as well as Threads, co-authored with Sandeep Parmar and Bhanu Kapil. States of the Body Produced by Love is her first full-length book.
Rebecca Tamás’ poetry and criticism has been published widely. She is the co-editor of Spells: 21s Century Occult Poetry with Sarah Shin, published by Ignota Books. Her first poetry collection, WITCH, was published by Penned in the Margins in 2019 to praise from the Poetry Book Society, the Guardian, Telegraph, Irish Times, TLS, White Review and The Paris Review. Rebecca is a lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University, where she co-curates The York Centre for Writing Poetry Series.Share
