こんにちは !

Born in Osaka Japan to Japanese-speaking parents but spending most of my childhood in cities across the US, I learned both Japanese and English simultaneously. Growing up bilingual meant becoming a bilingual poet, and I write my poems both in English and Japanese and in a mixture

of both, the languages always intertwining and crossing boundaries. I often do not feel I can properly answer questions like, “So, what is your mother tongue?” or “Which language do you feel more confident in?” I rarely give full detail about the relationship with my languages, but instead smile awkwardly and say “Oh, I really don’t know.” But for occasions where I would like to answer, I use the metaphor of a swimming pool.

In my language pool, I accumulate language by having differently colored water poured in. The more I use and play with them, the more the colors mix and become increasingly hard to separate. As much as an exoticizing attitude may be taken towards bilingual and multilingual writing, to me the mixture of the languages is my mother tongue, a language (singular) in which I live in and reflect the realities of my life. Studying at UEA and finding a more diverse audience, I am currently experimenting with sound and shape, the outer shell of language, and the non-meaning-making components of them.

Nomoskar !

My name Priya Tripathy and I come from Hyderabad, India. I grew up speaking four languages which are Sambalpuri, Hindi, Telugu and English. Words from both, Sambalpuri and Hindi often find their presence in my English poetry, even though I've developed my poetic voice in English. In a sense, English can be called my first language but I'm not a native speaker of it in the same way I would be, of the other languages. Indian English often has inflections of words from various local languages and moving to England has made me realise how starkly different it can be from British English, especially in the spoken form but also, in its written form. Sambalpuri is my mother tongue and is considered to be a dialect of Odia, as it only has an oral tradition and no written script and this is the language I speak at home. Hindi, on the other hand, is what I learned at school, as a second language. It's also one of the official languages of India, besides English. Being a full-time student of the M.A. Poetry course at UEA is helping me develop my distinctive multilingual voice, as a poet. Just as I've always inhabited a reality where these languages co-exist, my writing mirrors this world where fragments from different tongues belong together. This is the first time I'll be performing my poetry and I'm thrilled to be sharing it at a space that celebrates foreign languages and poets.

Merhaba!

My name is Elif and I am a second generation Turk. My father was born in a remote village in Eastern Anatolia and my mother, as English as grey skies and rainy weather, was born and bred in London like me. A blend of Turkish and English has been my norm for as long as I have been able to think, on account of learning to talk whilst living in the village as a toddler. I returned to the UK to enter nursery school and had lost the ability to speak English, to communicate with my mother and understand the world around me. Luckily, it wasn't long before I became fluent in both languages and despite only visiting Turkey for short periods once a year, I have retained my Turkish for my whole life.

Writing in Turkish is less familiar to me, but writing about being Turkish, writing about feeling othered in both spaces due to the nature of being dual heritage is comfortable territory. The poems I am sharing at this event touch on themes of belonging, memory and romance, on things that my tongue can turn over with ease. Sharing these poems with you helps me to embrace the blend of cultures, personal histories and traditions that define my identity.

Γειά σας!

My name is Maria and I am a Greek Cypriot. Greek is my mother language, and although I started learning English very young I think, feel and write more intensely in Greek. I have absolutely loved developing as a writer and poet whilst studying at UEA as it gave me the chance to develop a confident English voice without dimming my creativity in Greek. Creative writing comes naturally in both languages which can sometimes be overwhelming, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Learning to embrace both languages without feeling like I am asking for too much when I tell people to give my Greek poetry a read is definitely a journey in the process. Taking up space at a poetry event in the UK is a process by itself! I am definitely thrilled to share my poems with all of you and with them, a few fragile and vulnerable parts of me that expose my insecurities as a bilingual artist.