Sanctuary: Another Word for Refuge - Has Ended

Sanctuary: Another Word for Refuge - Poems and stories of the refugee experience

Join us in St John's as we host an evening of poetry with a focus on what it means to seek and provide refuge. We are honoured to welcome three prominent speakers, and this promises to be a profound and inspiring evening.

Alison Phipps holds the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow where she is also Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies, and Co-Convener of Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNET). She is a member of the Creativity, Culture and Faith group in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow where she teaches refugee studies, languages, religious and spiritual education, anthropology and intercultural education and education for non-violence. She received an OBE for Services to Education and Intercultural and Interreligious Relations. Alison is author of numerous books and articles and a regular international keynote speaker and broadcaster. Her first collection of poetry, Through Wood  was published in 2009 with a further collection forthcoming in 2018. 

As an internationally touring Pakistani Spoken Word Artist, Zainab Syed has performed & taught workshops at venues in the US, UK, Europe, South Asia and Australia. She has also facilitated workshops on writing as expression, healing and empowerment at the women's prison in Rhode Island, to trauma victims in Pakistan, and currently works with migrants and refugees in Australia. In 2015 she was a finalist in the National Australian Poetry Slam and won the Brown University Slam in 2012. Her scholarship and poetry focuses on the Middle East and South Asia, with specific attention paid to humanized politics, spiritual cultivation, reclaiming narratives & reimagining communities. Her first full length manuscript weaves the history of the Pakistani Partition with personal narrative in an attempt to reconcile memory and the act of remembering. Her poetry has been published in Recoil Magazine, Peril Magazine, Uneven Floor, Visions Magazine, The Missing Slate, Awaaz and other literary journals at Brown University.

Renee Pettitt-Schipp lived in the Indian Ocean Territories for three years, however 2014 saw her return home to Fremantle. Renee’s recent work shares her experiences in our nation’s most marginal territory, as well as her reflections on returning to the Australian mainland. Renee's work has appeared in multiple exhibitions, numerous publications, on national radio and been performed live in venues throughout Australia. In the past five years, Renee has been shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett manuscript prize, the ACU literature prize, the Katherine Susannah Pritchard poetry award, the WAPI Love Poetry Prize, the Trudy Graham Biennial Literary Award, and she has both won and been highly commended in the Ethel Webb Bundell prize for poetry. Renee is currently completing her PhD in Creative Writing through Curtin University.