Join two poets for an insightful discussion about the visually arresting collections they have produced as part of Scotland Street Press’ International Women 2021 series.

The event is free and there will also be complimentary wine.

Dr Bashabi Fraser CBE is an award winning poet, Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing and one of Saltire Society’s ‘Outstanding Women of Scotland’. Her collection of ‘pandemic poems’, Patient Dignity, was produced in collaboration with artist Vibha Pankaj. Pankaj’s paintings bring a layered vocabulary to powerful verses that celebrate transnational identity and compare moments in Indian and Scottish history.

Olivia Findlay also wrote her debut poetry collection, A Song to Keep, in conversation with an artist. Domenica de Ferranti’s charcoal drawings create an iconography to accompany Findlay’s poems, that lingers long after the page is turned. The poems are set against the backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, rooted in the experience of growing up in South Africa, exploring the challenges of motherhood, marriage and immigration.

Together, Findlay and Fraser reflect on their experiences of bringing artistic practices together while separated by distance. Their conversation encompasses themes of culture, displacement and acceptance.