Nadine El-Enany Launch Readings

‘These poems of Nadine El-Enany gorgeously anticipate her readers who wait at the ends of her utterances, desirous of consolation, we “who look for ourselves in each other”. A bracing social consciousness melds with a lyric transparency that make these poems supple enough to startle readers to that place where “only new things happen”.’ – Major Jackson

 

The poems of Nadine El-Enany’s debut collection Pelican Daughter are imbued with tenderness and fuelled by a hunger for justice, connection and a more empathic world. With stunning lyricism she fiercely probes the pain of being powerless in the face of global catastrophes – genocide, climate crisis – without tilting into despair. These poems do not divide the personal and political – indeed, boundaries are met with love and defiance, even when they appear immutable.

Pelican Daughter was a joint winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2024, and will be published by Bloodaxe Books on 24 September 2026.

Nadine El-Enany's poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Wales, And Other Poems and Under the Radar. She is Professor of Law at Kent Law School, having previously been Reader in Law at Birkbeck College, where she was Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law, and a Lecturer in Law at Brunel University. She is the author of (B)ordering Britain: Law, race and empire (Manchester University Press, 2020), co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press, 2021), and co-editor of After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response (Pluto Press, 2019). She lives in London.

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An excellent pre-publication review of of Nadine El-Enany’s debut collection Pelican Daughter featured in the Summer 2026 of The Poetry Review.

'For El-Enany, the poem is an attempt to distil a thought or feeling, a sensory or affective response in Auden’s legacy. It is a way to neatly capture a look, a passing sting, and the complicated feelings emerging from the task of parenthood. [...] El-Enany’s Pelican Daughter is a lyrical meditation on planetary catastrophe and a new life born in among the annihilation of people across the world. She moves us beyond the passivity of witness, articulating a grief that works on the body and soul in tandem, driven by a comprehensible fury at the violations of life that capitalism enables.' – Lola Olufemi, The Poetry Review

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

 

 

Newcastle Poetry Festival

Saturday 3 October, 3.15pm-4.15pm

James Berry Competition Winners Reading: Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Nadine El-Enany & Roshni Gallagher.

Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Nadine El-Enany and Roshni Gallagher were the three joint winners of Bloodaxe’s James Berry Poetry Prize 2024.

They will be reading from their debut collections, Belling the Leopard, Pelican Daughter and Even the Trees, which are published by Bloodaxe in September 2026.  

More details and booking here.

Berwick Literary Festival, Saturday 10 October, 2pm-3.15pm

Berwick Parish Centre, Parade, Berwick-upon-Tweed, TD15 1DF

Bloodaxe Poets: James Berry Poetry Prizewinners

Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Nadine El-Enany and Roshni Gallagher were the three joint winners of Bloodaxe’s James Berry Poetry Prize 2024.

They will be reading from their debut collections, Belling the Leopard, Pelican Daughter and Even the Trees, which are published by Bloodaxe in September 2026.  Introduced by Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.

All tickets: £10

Further information & bookings here.

 

Further festival readings to be announced.

[11 August 2026]

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