Momtaza
Mehri
Momtaza Mehri is a writer and researcher working across criticism, education, and radio. Currently, she is the Poet-in-Residence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge.
She is a columnist for Tate Etc, the arts magazine published by the Tate network of galleries. Her debut poetry collection Bad Diaspora Poems recently won the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection, as well as an Eric Gregory Prize. She is a recipient of a Somerset Maugham Award and a Sky Arts Award. In 2024, she was shortlisted as a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.
Her pamphlet Doing the Most with the Least was published by Goldsmiths Press.
Mehri is a former Young People’s Poet Laureate for London. She regularly works with international institutions and museums, including Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, AA School of Architecture, MoMA, University of Arts London, Nieuwe Instituut, ICA, and elsewhere. She has also presented papers, lectures, and workshops in Jakarta, New York, Berlin, Dubai, Tunis, Amsterdam, and elsewhere.
She is obsessed with slippage and spillage.
For looser encounters, subscribe to her newsletter bynoway.substack.com.
Writer, researcher, critic
CONTACT
mumtazamehri@gmail.com
For book inquiries, poem rights, and more ambitious commissions, reach out to David Evans at David Higham Associates.
For translation rights, contact Sophia Hadjipateras.
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Two poems from Bad Diaspora Poems (Granta)
A Few Facts We Hesitantly Know to Be Somewhat True (Poetry School)
By Such Honorifics, You Attempt to Summon the Old Country You Have Never Seen, (Jewish Currents)
A Violet Coagulation of Dispersals, (The White Review)
Diminishment At the End of Line 7, (bath magg)
Fluke by Any Other Name Is a Flight Number, (The Poetry Archive)
Reciprocity is a Two-Way Street, (Academy of American Poets)
Glory Be to the Gang Gang Gang, (POETRY)
I Am Bringing the History of the Kitchen Sink Into Our Bedroom and You Can’t Stop Me, (Adi Magazine)
A TABLEAU OF ASPIRATION OR FRANKLIN SITTING ON THE SOLITARY GARDEN DECK CHAIR IN 1973’s A CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING, (Jewish Currents)
Intimations, (The Poetry Archive)
Biscotti Boys / On Men Who Wear Living as Loosely as Their Suits, (GRANTA)
Though I Have Never Been to Ostia, I Have Seen the Place Where Our Dreams Died, (GRANTA)
Oiled Legs Have Their Own Subtext,(The Poetry Review)
Heard a Pop & It Wasn’t My Heart (Praise Song for the Shoulder), (DATABLEED)
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Essays
Universal Mother, (GRANTA)
The Consensus of Seasons, (Shubbak)
A Cage, Afloat: On I May Destroy You, Authorial Selves & Regimes of Relatability, (South London Gallery)
Harlem Is Hijaz Is Havana Is Harar, (BOMB Magazine)
On M.I.A, (GRANTA)
Mundane Travels, (SF MOMA / Open Space)
On Noise & Networks, (SF MOMA / Open Space)
Dispatches from the Black Gulf, (Poetry Review)
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Two Steps Ahead: Meeting Anna Boghiguian in Cairo, (Tate Etc.)
Latitude of Myths, (Tate Etc.)
On Mahmoud Khaled(4Columns)
How the Elite Captured Identity Politics, (ArtReview)
A Form Fit for this Feeling, (Other Cinemas)
Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism 2022: The White Lotus, (The Guardian)
Sex, Drugs and High Finance: What HBO’s ‘Industry’ Tells Us About Meritocracy(ArtReview)
Poets should ride the bus: on Diane di Prima (1934-2020), (Verso)
Salve to Exile: On Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf’s memory work, (Poetry London)
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Decentering the Document, (MoMA Forums on Contemporary Photography)
In Conversation: Warsan Shire & Momtaza Mehri, (GRANTA)
An Artificial Scarcity: A Conversation with Bertrand Cooper, (PEN Transmissions)
Girl on a Train: Getting Real with Fatima Daas, (BIDOUN)
In Conversation: m nourbeSe philip & Momtaza Mehri, (GRANTA)
Glitching the Master’s House: Legacy Russell and Momtaza Mehri in Conversation, (frieze)