Desert Sunflowers

Rowyda Amin was born in Newfoundland, Canada to parents of Saudi Arabian and Irish origin. She has lived in Riyadh and London and is now based in Stamford, Connecticut. Rowyda won first prize in the 2012 Venture Award for poetry pamphlets. In 2009, she was awarded the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for poetry. Rowyda has performed at many UK venues including the 2011 Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Brighton Festival, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Festival Hall. Her poems have appeared in several magazines, including Poetry Review, Magma and Wasafiri, and in the anthologies Ten (Bloodaxe Books 2010), Bird Book : Towns, Parks, Gardens and Woodland, (Sidekick Books, 2011), Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (Cinnamon Press, 2012), Coin Opera (Sidekick Books, 2009) and Exposure (Cinnamon Press,2010).

Desert Sunflowers is a work of broad vision, bold in both imagination and execution. At its core, there's a restlessness - a study of migration and a negotiation between place and notions of identity and self, but beyond that so much more. A beautifully balanced sense of the ominous; nods in the directions of magic realism and surreal narrative; a versatility in form and technique - Desert Sunflowers offers much to admire. - Venture Award