Umulkhayr Mohamed, 26, is a Welsh Somali writer, artist and curator whose artistic practice involves primarily poetry, artist moving image and performance work that has featured in the National Museum Cardiff, Where I’m Coming From anthology, Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival, Festival of Voice, COED: Roots & Legends, and COMMUNION: a happening at SHIFT Cardiff.
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How do you envisage the programme will help you in terms of your development?
“I’m at the stage where I feel it is vital for me to have some external, critical yet supportive input into my writing to move beyond potential and I see this programme as being the bridge for me to be able to achieve this. Being a part of this programme will also enable me to set aside time to focus on developing my writing, which before joining this programme I simply did not have access to the resources to do so.”
What are you most looking forward to as part of the programme? What are you hoping to achieve by taking part?
“Taking part in and attending literary events as its been some time since I have done this, and I always find them to be enriching for my writing practice. Having the space to connect to the rest of the cohort and learn informally from each other. Working with a mentor, I’m particularity looking forward to using the time I have with my mentor to discuss/pick apart several versions of a piece of my writing, as this is something I’ve really wanted to do for a while but haven’t had the chance to yet.”
As a writer, where would you like to be in 5 years?
“Some of my core writing ambitions is to publish both poetry collections and collections of essays, I would to have achieved this in five years time. I also see my writing career as central to my wider artistic practice, so I would also like to create artworks be that artist moving image piece, plays, performance art, paintings and sculptures that incorporate my writing in a number of ways.”