Reading/Writing Multilingualism

How does Britain’s contemporary linguistic and cultural diversity intersect with the thing we call ‘English Literature’? How can we bring these things together in the classroom, in literary study and in creative writing? This project, founded by Rachael Gilmour from Queen Mary’s English department, aims to explore these questions.

Over the past three years, groups of students from two Tower Hamlets secondary schools have joined us to talk, read, and write about their own linguistically diverse families and communities. Students have encountered an exciting and challenging range of multilingual poetry and prose, worked with contemporary poet Daljit Nagra, worked in a range of media to creatively explore themes of language, belonging, home and identity, and had the opportunity to produce and publish their own writing. 

On these webpages you can learn about the project, read anthologies of students’ writing, see films of students performing their work, and find images of their artwork.

There is also a set of teaching resources, developed from the project, for teachers to use and adapt in their own classroom practice. These include a film of a writing workshop with Daljit Nagra.

For further details, please get in touch: Rachael Gilmour