Rethinking Exile: A workshop on writing from the perspective of an outsider
A workshop with Ghayath Almadhoun
Date: 7th November, 2–4pm
Location: Kathleen Syme Library, Multipurpose Room 1
In this hybrid workshop-seminar, poet Ghayath Almadhoun invites participants to explore exile as a site of creation and transformation. Through readings, discussions, and exercises, participants will examine how poetry can reinvent and transform personal and collective experiences, as well as how displacement influences voice, perspective, and the act of writing. The workshop reimagines writing from experience and memory, as well as the effects of experimentation on the writing process.
Writing task
Students should prepare a short text (no more than one page) about one of the following subjects:
A woman whose sadness fell from the balcony and broke. Now, she needs a new sadness.
Or:
The war has ended.
Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet who was born in Damascus in 1979 and moved to Sweden in 2008. He has published five volumes of Arabic poetry, with his latest, I Brought You a Severed Hand, released in 2024. His poetry has been translated into nearly 30 languages. Almadhoun has also created several poetry films and curated numerous events, readings, and literary anthologies. He has collaborated extensively with scholars and artists. His poems have been included in projects by U.S. artist Jenny Holzer and German musician Blixa Bargeld, among others. In 2025, Action Books in the U.S. and Divided Publishing in London and Brussels published his book, I Brought You a Severed Hand, simultaneously. The book was also published in Dutch by Jurgen Maas in Amsterdam and in German by Karl Rauch Verlag. Most recently, Ars et Vita in Brazil published a Portuguese translation. Almadhoun currently divides his time between Berlin and Stockholm.
