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Literature Matters - Literature - British Council - Arts

Anna Obaidat, formerly Arts Officer and currently Senior Teacher for Training with the British Council in Jordan, talks about the extraordinary experience of turning teenagers and younger readers onto some of the brightest and liveliest writing from the UK.

Along with British–Jordanian novelist Fadia Faquir and Newcastle-based poet Mark Robinson, Scottish poet W. N. Herbert travelled to Bulgaria to make sweet music and passionate poetry alongside Bulgarian writers and musicians. All was not entirely as expected ...

The British Council has been working hard to promote UK writing overseas. We do this through our fantastic range of publications, such as , through our web projects such as enCompassCulture and the Contemporary Writers Database and through our regular UK events such as the Cambridge Seminar and the Edinburgh Bookcase. But one of the most exciting and challenging ways that we do this, is through our diverse and bold and extremely enjoyable (both for the writers and the audience, although there are some pretty hairy stories out there…) overseas writers' visits. We’ve dragged writers around Europe and China on a train, we’ve locked them up with other writers in a monastery in Germany and we’ve sent them off to talk politics and literature in post-war Serbia. And that’s just scratching the surface. Visit our overseas events page for more information.

But in this section, we introduce you to some recent overseas projects. The enterprising Anna Obaidat talks about how she encouraged the young people of Jordan to pick up the work of writers that they very probably would never have come across otherwise. And the poet
W. N. Herbert revels in his time in Bulgaria, hanging out in bookshops, galleries, prisons and mosques.

Take a look at our other publications and resources.

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