“I wanted to make space both for my own work as resident writer and to amplify other creative voices missing from this pastoral coastal landscape; older women’s voices, Black voices, voices of colour, migrant voices, queer and non-binary voices, working class voices, disabled voices. Many of us have centred the most crucial voice of all; the voice of the land, and its challenge to us to reciprocate the care, protection, spaces for rest and joy it has always given us. My intention is that our stories and poems act as a welcome, a creative spark – and a marker of radical hope in these precarious times.
Thank you to the close partnership and unswerving support of the South Downs National Park, and all the writers and spectrum of partners in making this possible”. Alinah Azadeh
Alinah Azadeh is a writer, artist, cultural activist and was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Seven Sisters Country Park and the Sussex Heritage Coast from December 2020 until November 2023.
In June 2023, Alinah launched We Hear You Now, a spoken word audio experience embedded in the landscape and online, presenting contemporary speculative fiction, poetry and new myths by herself and eight other Sussex-based writers of colour. Work by two additional writers were added to this body of audio commissions in Autumn 2023.
Azadeh was also creative lead for We See You Now (2019-22) a landscape and literature project and programme devised by Azadeh and dedicated to evoking trans-global perspectives on the heritage and connections of this iconic coastal area, through new stories and poetry by Azadeh and a cohort of writers, poets and performers of global majority heritage.
You can stay engaged with Alinah Azadeh’s work through her website: www.alinahazadeh.com and soundcloud.
