POETRY CLUB: TISHANI DOSHI, ASMAA AZAIZEH & ISABELLE BAAFI
June’s edition of Poetry Club is an evening of readings from three compelling voices in contemporary poetry: Tishani Doshi, Asmaa Azaizeh and Isabelle Baafi Moving between questions of conflict, identity and belonging, intimate histories and acts of personal transformation, their work explores how language bears witness to the pressures of our time Doshi will read from her new collection Egrets, While War, Azaizeh will present recent unpublished poems in Arabic with English translations read by Doshi, and Baafi will read from her award-winning debut collection Chaotic Good.
TISHANI DOSHI
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet and dancer of WelshGujarati descent
Her fourth collection A God at the Door was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2021. Her third, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, following Everything Begins Elsewhere (2012), and Countries of the Body, winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Her fifth collection, Egrets, While War, was published by Bloodaxe in May 2026. She has also published two novels with Bloomsbury. She worked for many years with the legendary choreographer Chandralekha, performing with her on international stages She lives near Chennai, India, and is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Practice, Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
ASMAA AZAIZEH
Asmaa Azaizeh is a Palestinian poet, writer, performer and editor based in London. She is the author of four poetry collections and a memoir, A Year of Small Museums (2024). Her 2018 collection Don’t Believe Me If I Talk of War has been translated into several languages and formed the basis of an audio-visual performance that premiered at the Avignon Theatre Festival in 2022. She previously served as the first Director of the Mahmoud Darwish Museum in Ramallah and has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and cultural organiser.
ISABELLE BAAFI
Isabelle Baafi is a poet, editor and critic. Her pamphlet Ripe won the Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice Her debut collection Chaotic Good (Faber, 2025) won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, The London Magazine and Oxford Poetry
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