Poetry London Picks André Naffis-Sahely for Editor

Congratulations to André Naffis-Sahely who has been appointed Poetry London's new poetry editor! Poetry London writes: "Having been the Poetry Editor at Ambit for the last three years, he will assume full duties as editor from February, and his first issue in post with Poetry London will be Summer 2021." Picking up from there: 

André Naffis-Sahely is the author of the collection The Promised Land: Poems from Itinerant Life (Penguin, 2017) and the editor of The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature (Pushkin Press, 2020) and is a translator with over twenty titles of fiction, nonfiction and poetry to his name.

Naffis-Sahely said of coming into the role:

“I am delighted to take up the position of Poetry Editor at Poetry London, one of the very first literary magazines I picked up, back at the age of fifteen in Abu Dhabi, almost exactly twenty years ago. Over the past three years as poetry editor at Ambit, I proudly published the work of Caleb Femi, Róisín Kelly, Jenny Xie, Threa Almontaser, Hibaq Osman, Taher Adel, Mona Kareem, Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal and Gboyega Odubanjo, among many others. Editing Ambit has made me a better person and broadened not just my reading habits, but my concerns and interests and I hope to bring that enthusiasm to Poetry London. I look forward to showcasing even more work from voices that have been persistently sidelined by mainstream British and American publishing, placing a greater emphasis on working class writers and on work in translation, especially from underrepresented and endangered languages. I believe poetry has a responsibility to challenge and unsettle; it should have an axe to grind, as it rises to challenge our preconceptions and do exactly what an axe does, cut through them.”

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Naffis-Sahely enters the role following the acting editorship of Martha Sprackland, whom the Board and staff team praised for her ‘invaluable leadership’, under which the magazine has grown and thrived.

Hurray! Learn more at Poetry London.