cia mangat 👍👍
"Vivid and tender and intimate, with humor and adoration, these poems are a celebration of closeness, of the rituals of adornment, of noticing, of lineage. I want to live always in the world of these poems, to be held by them always." - Safia Elhillo on Lobe
Hello! I'm a writer / facilitator / zine-maker based in London. I founded and edited zindabad, a print zine 4 diasporas everywhere. In 2024 I won the New Poets Prize - my debut pamphlet is out with The Poetry Business (buy it here!)Writing/running workshops is mostly what I do, but I have been known to say yes to other things (including designing book covers + judging poetry competitions for young people + chairing book talks).
I work at The Poetry Society, where I run Young Poets Network, facilitate the Young Critics Scheme, and organise poet visits into schools.
poems
read
In 2024 I won the New Poets Prize - my debut pamphlet Lobe is out with The Poetry Business (buy it here!)I was a Foyle Young Poet (three times), a Barbican Young Poet (twice) and a member of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective (once).> detonator + headliners - jane martin poetry prize 2025
> don't do it di - fourteen poems issue 15
> sometimes I wonder if my ma is right & I do actually fancy boys - propel mag
> 1996 - bath magg
> origin myth - commission for BBC Radio 3's The Verb
> in spite of everything your hands and all of these things are true and not true - The Isis
> Lately - commission for the Barbican's Subject to Change seriesperforming
queer poetry stanza, off the chest, queer noise, everything poetry night, southbank centre, the barbican, BBC radio 3 (the verb), radio 4, 6Music, ledbury poetry festival
facilitating
I love facilitating workshops and I'm very open to chatting about new ways to bring poetry/collage-making to more people--book me please!Here's a selected list of workshops I've facilitated recently (ish):poetry/writing
> Art as Resistance (January 2024) - a donation-based Zoom workshop, fundraising for Restless Beings and Workers for Palestine, where I talked participants through Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha's work, plus some generative writing
> Cento-making with Off the Chest (October 2023) - a pay-what-you-want workshop at Deptford Lounge, where I led participants through the process of assembling cento (collage) poems
> Drafting Table with Oxford Poetry Library (May 2023) - a free workshop where I led participants through some generative prompts, before a session all about offering peer feedback and the importance of poetry communitycollaging/zines
> Getting Your Work Out There (November 2024) - an intro workshop to the world of getting published/self-publishing through zines for Camden Young Writers
> India Pale Ale (October 2023) - a free zine making workshop exploring the history of india pale ale & desi pub culture, run as part of Phoebe Wagner's film project (Pub)lic House
> Tate Late (April 2022) - a free zine making workshop exploring what it feels like to be in the South Asian diasporaother
As part of my day job at The Poetry Society, I facilitate regular online writing workshops and the Young Critics Scheme.
zindabad
I started the diaspora zine zindabad in winter 2020. The zine is sadly no longer running, but you can still buy print copies or view our digital archive for free here. Each issue features prose, poetry, visual art and interviews from creatives across diasporas.Between 2020-2023 we published four print issues ('diaspora???', 'aunty issues!', 'shame / desire', 'food'). I edited the first two issues of the zine solo, before recruiting a lovely team of creatives who worked on the latter two.We put on a number of workshops and open mics on in London and online. In 2022, we ran a diaspora poetry night at the National Poetry Library in the Southbank Centre (listen here) and a collaging workshop as part of a Tate Late, curated by artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman.You can listen to audio versions of issues 002-003 on Spotify and Apple Podcasts (search 'zindabad zine').
zines (under construction)
COMMEMORATING THE EFFERVESCENT LIFE & EVERLASTING INFLUENCE OF OUR PRINCESS OF WALES LADY DIANA FRANCES SPENCER RIP IN LUV N PEACE SWEET ANGEL BABY GORGEOUS (2022) - read heregoss (2024) - read here