Nithy Kasa: Poetry Ireland—I bhFad i gCéin

Nithy Kasa was born in Kimpese, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and was raised in its capital Kinshasa and in Galway, West of Ireland. Joining the Dublin Writers’ Forum in 2011, she went on to read for Poetry Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy, Bray Literary Festival, the Dublin Book Festival, Fingal Poetry Festival, the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Cork World Book Festival, the RTE Poetry Programme, and others. She has contributed to anthologies like Vital Signs: Poems of Illness and Healing, Dedalus Press’s Writing Home: The New Irish Poets, Embers of Words: An Irish Anthology of Migrant Poetry, Hold Open the Door: A Commemorative Anthology from the Ireland Chair of Poetry, and to poetry magazines such as the Poetry Ireland Review, Flare, and A New Ulster. She features on the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation website, and her work can also be found in the Dublin Business School’s Archive, the University of Galway’s Archive, and the special collections of the University College Dublin. She was a guest poet for the 2019 Carlow University’s (USA) MFA Residency at Trinity College Dublin. Her poem Gathering was shortlisted for the Red Line Book Festival the same year. She received the Poetry Ireland Commission 2020, with the support of an Arts Council of Ireland Commissions Award, and was shortlisted for the Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho, published by Doire Press in 2022, was amongst the selected collections by the Arts Councils of Ireland for the read mór book gifts for Culture Night. Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho was listed amongst the top poetry books of 2022 by the Irish Times. Nithy divides her time between Ireland and The Congo.

Safia Jama was born to a Somali father and an Irish American mother in Queens, New York. A Cave Canem Fellow, she has published poetry in Ploughshares, Boston Review, World Literature Today, Spoken Black Girl, and Poem-A-Day. Her poetry has also been featured on WNYC’s Morning Edition and CUNY TV’s Shades of US series. Jama was a semifinalist in the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry, and she is the author of Notes on Resilience, included in the New-Generation African Poets chapbook box set (Akashic Books, 2020). Her debut collection of poems is Crowded House (Beltway Editions, 2023).