Poet
Hailed as one of Yorkshire’s most prolific poets by the BBC, Khadijah Ibrahiim was born in Leeds of Jamaican parentage. Educated at the University of Leeds, she is a literary activist, theatre maker and published writer, who combines interdisciplinary art forms to re-imagine poetry as performance theatre. Her work appears in university journals and poetry anthologies. Her collection ‘Another Crossing’ was published by Peepal Tree Press 2014. Khadijah has performed and produced art programmes in the USA, Caribbean, Africa and Asia. In 2010, she was writer-in-residence for El Gouna Writes, Egypt, and the same year she travelled to South Africa as part of the British Council Verbalized Sustained Theatre programme. In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Compton Fellowship. And in 2018, she was shortlisted for the Sue Rider ‘Yorkshire Woman of the Year’ for her contribution to the arts. She is the Artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, and executive producer of the award winning documentary ‘We Are Poets’. In 2017, she was creative associate for the theatre production Ode To Leeds at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Khadijah was part of Collections in Verse, Poet in the City and the British Library the commission that celebrates poets to create new work inspired by British Library exhibitions and local histories, stories and experiences. She is an associate artist with the Geraldine Connor Foundation GCF, the coordinator for Inscribe Readers Writer’s development programme for Peepal Tree Press. Her most recently commissioned work includes writing and directing ‘Sorrel & Black cake’ A Windrush Story, a Heritage Lottery funded program as part of GCF. ‘Dead and Wake’ Opera North 2020 Resonance and Leeds Playhouse Connecting Voices.