The 2021 Manchester Multi-Language Mushaira is going to take place online this year, so everyone can attend. It takes place online on Saturday 20th February 6-8pm.  Join us.  You can sign up now to attend the event.

This live event, hosted by poet Anjum Malik at the Manchester Poetry Library, will feature poetry on the theme of Friendship. Poetry will be written and performed by the Creative Crew, a group of children from four Manchester primary schools, led by Emma Martin from Stanley Grove Primary Academy and Usma Malik from Manchester Metropolitan University.

This event is the culmination of a project that any schools can participate in.  Led by Emma Martin from Stanley Grove Primary Academy and their project, Building the Bridge, this is the third Multi-Language Mushaira.  It gets bigger and better each year!  Schools wishing to participate can run their own Mushairas, create their own poetry and artwork and submit videos and photographs online, to make this a huge celebration of the many languages spoken by children in our city.

If you are working in a school, library or home-educating and would like to know how to showcase multi-lingual poetry and literature, there are packs of downloadable resources courtesy of Stanley Grove Primary Academy and Emma Martin below. There you will find an introductory presentation, and lots of fun and exciting ways to bring mother language into a classroom, please feel free to use. These are all completely free and include inspirational poetry, video links, worksheets and much, much more.  You could keep your children occupied for a month!  In fact, that is the idea! Whether you just read or listen to the friendship poems by poets like Anjum Malik, Valerie Bloom, Usma Malik, Fielding Ronshaugen or Emma Martin herself, or go the whole hog and run your own Mushaira, the materials will inspire you. They are available to download below.

The best thing to do is download, print them out and decide what you want to do.  There are ideas for pavement poetry, Hands of Friendship window decorations, poetry from around the world … the list goes on.  All we ask is that, in the run up to IMLD2021 (Feb 21st) you Tweet pictures and videos of what you’ve been up and tag us in: @MCRCityofLit @BuildBridgeArt @MCBFestival #MCRIMLD2021 #FriendshipPoetry2021.