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Lindsey Hilsum stands against a pink background wearing a green jumper and scarf.
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Lindsey Hilsum: I Brought the War with Me

Foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum shares her beautiful new book, a collection of poems that have kept her going through conflicts, and stories around them.

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Hilsum is joined by poets Fiona Benson, Nick Makoha and Pireeni Sundaralingam, who share poems from the anthology, and join a conversation chaired by Lyse Doucet.

In nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflict from Palestine to Kosovo to Rwanda, Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry.

It helps her make sense of the senseless, salve her soul as the world around her rages, and remember those she has met in the darkest of times. In Ukraine, she tweeted a poem a day, and people began to read, to share and to ask for more.

In I Brought the War with Me, Hilsum collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern, translated from different languages and by writers from all around the world. Alongside each, she recalls a memory from her own work, whether interviewing the warlords of Bosnia and Sudan, meeting child soldiers in Uganda or giving testimony about the genocide in Rwanda.

Her prose reveals comic absurdity and astonishing courage, meaning and its absence, unexpected moments of love and the untold consequences that come long after most cameras disperse. She explores the pity of war – and its fatal attraction.

Vital, authentic, a read like no other, this is the first account Lindsey has written of her experience, accompanied by the voices of poets through the ages who have fought, witnessed terror or fled their homes, yet found the words to capture their humanity.

Fiona Benson’s three collections of poetry were all shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize; Bright Travellers won the 2015 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry’s Prize for First Full Collection, and Vertigo & Ghost won both the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

Nick Makoha was shortlisted for the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection for his debut collection Kingdom of Gravity. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow, Malika’s Kitchen Fellow and Complete Works Alumni. His poems have appeared in The New York Times, Poetry Review, Rialto, Poetry London, Triquarterly Review, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Wasafiri.

Pireeni Sundaralingam, College Poet Laureate and Interdisciplinary Catalyst at University College, Oxford, is both a poet and a cognitive scientist. She published her first poems whilst an undergraduate and she has gone on to have work published in over thirty literary journals, translated into five languages. She is currently completing a collection of poetry based on her memories of the civil war and genocide in Sri Lanka.

Presented in collaboration with English PEN

Need to know

Age guidance
For ages 16+
Event information

Hardback copies of I Brought the War with Me are available to purchase as an optional add-on for the discounted price of £12.99 (RRP £16.99). The book must be collected on the night of the event, as we’re unable to distribute copies afterwards.

For your visit

This event is held at the Purcell Room Southbank Centre

The Purcell Room is located in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which is open from 90 minutes before events start until they finish. It’s closed at all other times.

Concrete interior of Purcell Room entrance at Southbank Centre View larger image

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The Purcell Room is an auditorium located within our Queen Elizabeth Hall.

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