Time Cleaves Itself: Poetry Night with Jeda Pearl & Friends

Please note - current plan is to hold this event in the garden as the weather is so lovely!

A true highlight of our summer, we're celebrating the wondrous Jeda Pearl and her enchanting debut collection Time Cleaves Itself.

To borrow the words of the award winning Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo "The bounding, intelligent wondrousness of Time Cleaves Itself challenges readers who may have despaired about where song belongs in challenging times... I'm overjoyed to see poetry's future in Jeda Pearl's work." We too are overjoyed, with the collection and with the opportunity to mark its arrival in the world - an event not to be missed!

For this event Jeda is in conversation with poet Courtney Stoddart, and joined by Lisa Williams who is opening the event with a reading.

The Book:

In Time Cleaves Itself, a disabled Scottish woman of colour invites you into the split and rewoven threads of her intersecting, in between worlds as she navigates belonging and claiming space.

Landscapes and bodyscapes are brought into focus through lenses of race, illness, disability and womanhood. Ancestral languages of Scots, Patois, Geordie and English critique ableism, colonialism and Scottish exceptionalism; they ask ‘Who gets the trees?’, honour Caribbean and Scottish heritages and move from the bed as universe to fantastical and science-fictional imaginings.

Here, lyrical acts of observation unfold with defiance, tenderness, rhythm and the occasional side-eye. The accordion of time stretches across poems that deliver a sonic meditation on memory, grief, disability, belonging, empathy and resilience.

The Poet:

Jeda Pearl is a Scottish Jamaican writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Sky Arts RSL Award and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. Art installations include Windrush Legacy Creative Reflections (2023), Caledonian Biotech Library, 3033 (Scottish Storytelling Centre, 2022) and Acts of Observation (Collective, 2021). Performances include StAnza, Hidden Door, Push the Boat Out, Cymera, Loud Poets and Edinburgh International Book Festival. Her poems and short stories are published by New Writing Scotland, Open Book, Not Going Back to Normal, Shoreline of Infinity, Aesthetica, Tapsalteerie, Luna Press and Stewed Rhubarb. Her debut poetry collection, Time Cleaves Itself, is published by Peepal Tree Press. @JedaPearl jedapearl.com