Wander

Bairbre Flood
  • 5.0 (3)
  • ARTS
  • EVERY TWO MONTHS

Poets with experience of seeking refuge share their writing. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Cover art painting by Shukran Shirzad. Produced by Bairbre Flood.

  1. 18/09/2025

    Wander Open Call

    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 Noah How To Be by Sanjar Qiam The Dilemma by Hiba Rasheed Wind Blows Sudden by B3dmah  Caged Bird by Shaza يحتلك الشيطان (Occupied By The Devil) by Hend Jouda Produced by Bairbre Flood - www.bairbreflood.org Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland Wander is a podcast that gives spaces to poets with lived experience of seeking refuge, migration or exile.

    28 min

  2. 11/08/2025

    Hend Jouda

    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.org With thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland for their funding support.

    9 min

  3. 13/07/2025

    Fionnuala O'Connell

    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

    18 min

  4. 06/06/2025

    Dean Oke

    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 //

    21 min

  5. 23/05/2025

    Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

    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.

    54 min

  6. 09/05/2025

    Amano

    Amano is a multidisciplinary artist with roots in Ireland and Japan. Her practice includes sean-nós, vocal improvisation and folk storytelling. She’s working to de-colonise the Irish language through music, and writes beautiful, evocative and often politically charged poetry and spoken word. She reads her poem, 'Underpass 6' and we've a lovely talk about sean-nós singing, the everyday practice of decolonising ourselves, how activism fuels her art, being a culchie from both Ireland and Japan and much more. The music you hear throughout this programme is all from Thread the gorgeous experimental Irish-language album she created with Kalabanx, and recorded by GMC Beats, in the Kabin Studio. Follow Amano: @amanoanseo --- Wander is produced by Bairbre Flood with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland // @bairbreflood

    47 min

  7. 01/05/2025

    Lavie Olupona

    In this special Poetry Day episode, Lavie Olupona reads her poems and we talk about being a young writer in Ireland today, setting up the new magazine Blaithi ('Little Flower' in Irish) and how her Nigerian and Traveller ethnicity influences her writing.  Wander, produced by Bairbre Flood, gives space to poets with lived experience of exile and is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. www.bairbreflood.org

    19 min

  8. 25/04/2025

    Noor Hindi

    Palestinian-American poet, journalist, teacher and activist Noor Hindi's debut poetry collection Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow published by Haymarket Books, was an honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award.  She reads us several  poems from this collection  - ‘Palestine’, ‘Breaking News’, ‘Swearing Allegiance’. And ‘A Day, A Life: When a Medic Was Killed in Gaza, Was It an Accident?’ for Rouzan al-Najjar after / in defiance of a piece published by the New York Times about al Najjar'.  She’s currently editing a Palestinian poetry anthology Heaven Looks Like Us also published by Haymarket Books - which is due out in May.  We talk about this anthology and her insights into political writing, organising and radical art, the power of stories especially in the Palestinian context, going beyond witness towards action + more. 'I also think the idea of witness is limited in that I think it is the beginning of a process for social justice and community building, not the end...I think that we need to move beyond this idea of witness too. Maybe the first step is awareness of an atrocity and knowing that some violence is happening and sharing it and talking about it, and then the next step is organising around a way to help.' - Noor Hindi Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Produced by Bairbre Flood.

    35 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Poets with experience of seeking refuge share their writing. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Cover art painting by Shukran Shirzad. Produced by Bairbre Flood.

Information

  • Creator
    Bairbre Flood
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    39
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Bairbre Flood
  • Show Website
    Wander