Cora Dessalines, Val Wandja | Whose Wor(l)d Is This?

Following the release of the poetry collection zine Rage & Desire in October 2022, Cora Dessalines and Val Wandja, two of the published poets, return to Rome to perform their poems and discuss their practice, creative process and how poetry develops into their artistry and life.

This event is a continuation of Whose Wor(l)d is This? Diverse Voices in Urban Literature in The UK and Italy, a project realized in collaboration with Inua Ellams and Orbita Spellbound, supported by the British Council's International Collaboration Grants.

Cora Dessalines

Queer, non-binary afrofuturist poet and writer, their work mainly focuses on the themes of love, loss, and rage. Drawing from the imagery and the language of the natural world and the cosmos, both their poetry and their writing is a channel to invigorate their community, to galvanise it and materially create the liberating worlds that afrofuturism allows us to imagine. Cora has published their work on bad form magazine, on lacuna literary magazine, and on iamb poetry. They are currently working on their first science-fiction novel. 

Wal Wandja

Born in Rome to an Italian mother and a Cameroonian father, she graduated from the Centro Studi Acting in 2020. The same year she participated in the Salt Lake City Fringe Festival with Safe, a show that won Best Performance and Audience Award. She directed and performed her first theatrical short film Prossima Puntata which, after winning the Dominio Pubblico Under25 call, became a full-length play debuting at Spazio Rossellini in 2021. She created, together with Yonas Aregay, Anatomia di un fiore (Anatomy of a flower), winner of the call Powered by REf, and presented at Romaeuropa Festival and Direction Under 30, 2022. 

This event is a continuation of Whose Wor(l)d is This? Diverse Voices in Urban Literature in The UK and Italy, a project realised in collaboration with Inua Ellams and Orbita Spellbound, supported by the British Council's International Collaboration Grants.