Poetry International x Codarts: Poetic Compositions

In this new collaboration Poetry International connects three Codarts music students to three international poets. Based on the poets' work, the students compose a new and experimental piece of music. On Saturday we witness Harm Kolon’s presentation based on the work of poet Momtaza Mehri (GBR).

Kolen is taking inspiration from Momtaza Mehri's poem Conditionals to investigate the criteria for a sense of home. Together with Mehri, he explores the need for identity and reflects on the desire for common ground during a 30-minute Blues Conversation.

Momtaza Mehri

Momtaza Mehri is a British-Somali poet, essayist, editor, and researcher. She was the Young People’s Laureate of London in 2018 and 2019.  

It is tempting to say that Momtaza Mehri’s poems mix personal experiences with world events, but of course the point is that world events are personal experiences – they happen to people. Mehri is British-Somali, but she and her poetry might better be described as transnational, devoted as they are to crossing and destroying borders of all kinds. She grew up with four different languages and came to poetry through a variety of traditions. Her poetry engages with diaspora but it is as celebratory as it is sad and also takes cues from a startling range of other sources.  

In the past, Mehri is the Poet-in-Residence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Her work is broad and complex, informed by a rich range of cultures, literatures and interests. She is a columnist for Tate Etc, the arts magazine published by the Tate network of galleries and a fellow of The Complete Works programme and part of Octavia “a poetry collective for womxn of colour founded in response to the lack of inclusivity and representation in literature and academia”. Mehri was one of three winners of the 6th Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2018. Her debut poetry collection Bad Diaspora Poems (2023) recently won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, as well as an Eric Gregory Prize and Somerset Maugham Award.  

Harm Kolen 

The interspace is the field of work of composer & creative thinker Harm Kolen. As an archaeologist of ideas, he is constantly digging the ground to find the friction between differences. By using topics from outside the world of music, concepts emerge that play on the listener's association. Previously, Kolen designed music for tinnitus patients and built a composition for the Ricciotti Ensemble based on the architecture of an average street in Belgium. In his personal aesthetic, black and white create a gray area in which there is room for ambivalence and nuance. In doing so, he interacts with the thoughts of his audience in the hope that the listener will leave with more questions than they came with.