What She Said by Ilisha Thiru Purcell: Book Launch

Join us to celebrate the launch of Ilisha Thiru Purcell’s debut pamphlet, What She Said, with readings from Jj Fadaka and Zainab Imran. There will also be a Q&A with Ilisha hosted by Mymona Bibi.

Ilisha Thiru Purcell’s debut pamphlet asks the question of how a body, be it human, water, land, or animal, can contain and live through what has happened to it.

‘In her stunning debut pamphlet, Ilisha Thiru Purcell reworks and revivifies the millennia old Tamil poetic practice of Thinnai – the poetics of a codified landscape – transplanting it to her home environment in the North East of England. Her perfectly crafted, almost elegiac poems root trauma and recovery deeply within a landscape which acts not just as witness, but also as a canvas. For me, reading What She Said felt like coming home: not to a home I once abandoned, but to the comforting presence of the old within the new. An exciting fresh voice which plays with form and metaphor with breath taking skill, this is diasporan poetics at its best.’ – Shash Trevett; The Naming of Names (Smith|Doorstop 2024) and co-editor of Out of Sri Lanka (Bloodaxe 2023)

Content information: please note that themes of sexual violence will be discussed during the event. 16+ recommended.

About the speakers:

Ilisha Thiru Purcell is an award-winning Sri Lankan-Scottish poet from Newcastle upon Tyne. She was part of the inaugural Poets of Colour Incubator Programme and was a Young Creative Associate with New Writing North. Ilisha was a Poet in Residence at the 2025 StAnza Poetry Festival, winning the Futurist Award. She has been shortlisted for the James Berry Prize and Nine Arches’ Primers. Her work has appeared in publications such as Bi+ Lines Anthology, Butcher’s Dog, and Third Space Anthology. What She Said is Ilisha’s debut poetry pamphlet and was published by Verve Poetry Press in April 2025. @ilishadoespoetry

Mymona Bibi is a Bengali-British writer, facilitator and teacher based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Her writing has been featured in the Ilkley Literature Festival, Magma Poetry, Butcher's Dog, Written Off Publishing, and Lumpen Press. She has produced and performed at events such as the Newcastle Fringe Festival (2023) and NOVUM (2023 and 2024). She created and now facilitates the World Writes multilingual community writing group. @wordsbymymona

Jj Fadaka is a writer, facilitator, and radical based in Edinburgh. Their writing explores the possibility of abolition, feminism, and love to create change. Their work speaks to the political urgencies we face while centring community-making in our resistance.

Zainab Imran is a poet and facilitator of British Pakistani heritage from Manchester. In 2022, they were awarded the Royal Society of Literature and Sky Arts Award for Poetry as an emerging writer of colour, and were part of the Words a Stage 2.0 cohort with Apples and Snakes. They were shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2024 and was also part of the Poetry Translation Centre’s UNDERTOW programme. Zainab is now working towards their PhD in creative writing at the University of St Andrews, researching and poeticising race, identity and decolonialism in museum spaces.