#AfterhoursIn 2015, Inua Ellams was poet in residence at the Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre in London. His #Afterhours project took him on a voyage of cultural translation and transposition through time and place, to the heart of the libraries' rare books collection, and through his own lifes story as he selected poems published during each year of his life, from birth to the age of 18. In return, Ellams opens up a captivating and potent dialogue between

Norbert Hirschhorn

but thereafter much of his fiction has focused on the lives of West Indians in Canada

and I cried my eyes out and thought to myself that I would never wash my hand again

the speaking of native languages abroad

Judith Kazantzis

a frequent criticism

Told through the perspectives of Winston and his estranged brother

personal awakening

he joined Stars in Battledress

and a raised cultural awareness to these poems

and fell asleep

Victim of a political vendetta