Poetry Mentoring

Poetry Mentoring

Sanah is an award-winning poet, writer and educator. Their debut collection was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and longlisted for the Polari Prize. The collection was also selected as one of The Guardian's best poetry books, featured on Poetry Unbound, and has been widely praised for its exploration of queerness, faith, psychology, love and liberation.

They are the recipient of the Out-Spoken Poetry Prize and have been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, White Review Poetry Prize, Bridport Prize and Frontier Poetry Prize. Their work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Rialto, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, bath magg and elsewhere. They are a member of The Racial Imaginary Institute, founded by Claudia Rankine, and an alum of Southbank Centre's New Poets Collective and BBC Words First.

Sanah offers one-to-one poetry mentoring for emerging and established writers. Sessions can support the development of individual poems, manuscript projects, performance work, creative practice and navigating the poetry publishing landscape. Their approach combines close attention to craft with a deep commitment to voice, imagination and the social worlds that shape our writing.

Please get in touch to discuss mentoring.

Let's work together

"Sanah's mentoring through my poetry was incredibly robust, thoughtful and considerate of my poetic voice... They also challenged me in the ways that I needed... to express my poetic intention through stronger imagery, and new ideas. I felt that my poems were seen in a completely different way to how other poetry editors and mentors have seen my work... I highly recommend Sanah as a poetry mentor. I think they are incredible. What they are doing in the world as both a poet and liberation psychologist is so brilliant and necessary, which is why I trusted them with my work, with me and my experience."

— Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson

“Sanah Ahsan’s debut is alive with a want and restlessness that remakes the “You” of desire – and faith – again and again.”

— Will Harris

Sanah’s poetry collection:

I Cannot Be Good (Until you say it)

Intricately weaving Quranic verse, psychology, and the hip-hop soundtrack of their childhood, Sanah's reach for divinity in the queer body; an archive that refuses erasure.