Tjawangwa Dema

 Event 

In Conversation with Poet Tjawangwa Dema

In her award-winning collection The Careless Seamstress (2019), Tjawangwa Dema explores themes including the gendering of labour, the female gaze, and the arts of listening, interweaving the politics of the personal into the eco-poetic.

In conversation with Dr Samantha Walton, Dema will tell us about how her eco-poetry workshop series is tackling the challenge of eco-literacy. We will also get the chance to hear her read from recent work, and to discuss her current collaborative project, which explores how ethnicity complicates access, belonging, and perceptions of nature.

About the speaker

Tjawangwa Dema is author of The Careless Seamstress (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) which received the Sillerman First Book Prize. A poet and teaching artist she has been shortlisted for Bristol City Poet and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. TJ’s chapbook Mandible was published in 2014 as part of the African Poetry Book Fund’s New Generation Poets boxset series.

A 2012 Fall Resident of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and former chairperson of the Writers Association of Botswana, she holds an MA in Creative Writing. TJ has given readings and facilitated workshops in over twenty countries including Brazil, India, Botswana, Singapore, Denmark, the USA and Germany. Her poetry and essays have been featured in various journals and anthologies, most recently New Daughters of Africa, Botswana Women Write and Goldsmiths University’s Inspire: Exciting Ways to Teach Creative Writing.

She is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol and co-produces the Africa Writes – Bristol festival. Her latest project is a collaborative exploration of ethnicity and the environment.

Find out more about Tjawangwa Dema's work on her website.