Refugee Tales
with David Herd, Pious Keku and Chris Maloney

Yew Tree Farm, Sweffling

17/9/2022 12:30 - 13:15

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Everyone seeking refuge has a story to tell, including as part of their asylum claim, where it gets a range of responses from interest, empathy, and concern to outright disbelief. Through reflections on therapeutic practice, activism, and lived experience, we will consider the importance of sharing, hearing and understanding the realities of displacement, and think about the importance of story in campaigns for change in public attitudes, policy and law. 

About Pious Keku
Pious is a long-term contributor to the Refugee Tales project. He has lived experience of immigration detention and is now studying at Goldsmiths, University of London.

About David Herd
David Herd is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, most recently Walk Song (Shearsman, 2022). His 2012 collection, All Just, was described by the Los Angeles Review of Books as ‘one of the few truly necessary works of poetry written on either side of the Atlantic in the past decade’. Through, published in 2016, was a Book of the Year in The Herald newspaper. He has given readings and lectures in Europe, North America, India and Australia and has held visiting fellowships at George Mason University, Simon Fraser University and the Writing Center Gloucester, Massachusetts. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent and a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales.

About Chris Maloney

Chris Maloney has been a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and GP, and has been an expert witness in people’s asylum claims since 2003.  He is a Trustee of FlipSide, and on the Board of TortureID, a human rights organisation in the north of England. His new book is ‘Seeking Asylum and Mental Health’ (Cambridge University Press, 2022), edited jointly with Julia Nelki and Alison Summers.  He has also written ‘Intelligent Kindness – Rehabilitating the Welfare State’ with John Ballatt and Penelope Campling (Cambridge University Press 2020).

Image of David Herd by Sarah Hickson

Literature