The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE, an interactive and multimedia exhibition curated by award-winning writer, editor and cultural producer Su’ur Su’eddie Vershima Agema, will form part of the D. H. Lawrence Festival 2026 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom.

Presented as part of the festival programme coordinated by Broxtowe Borough Council, the exhibition will run from July to September 2026 at the D. H. Lawrence Museum and will feature poetry readings and other public engagement activities inspired by its central themes.

Produced by SEVHAGE ABC4DE, TransitUs, and the Benue Book and Arts Festival (BBAAF), with support from INKspiredng, The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE brings together poetry, photography, letters, handwritten notes, and other creative expressions in a layered conversation around love, (dis)trust, memory, nostalgia, sensuality, migration, inheritance, fracture, healing, and unfinished becoming.

Inspired in part by the poetry and wider literary oeuvre of D. H. Lawrence, the exhibition explores the many shades of optimism and asks what it means to remain emotionally open in an increasingly fractured world. Through intimate and often personal works, contributors reflect on the tensions between certainty and doubt, belonging and displacement, memory and forgetting, and the possibilities that exist within life’s incompleteness.

Speaking on the exhibition, curator Su’ur Su’eddie Vershima Agema said: “The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE is a call to a conversation that embraces fragments, unfinished stories, and the spaces between certainty and uncertainty. One of the key things we hope to reflect on is the hope we hold in the basic completeness and incompleteness of life plus everything that is in that fine place between both. The idea is to have a flow that brings in nostalgia, shows the present and shows traces of the future.”

The exhibition will feature contributions from a vemerging and established artists, photographers, writers, and members of the public, creating a transnational conversation that bridges cultures, experiences, and generations.

D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) remains one of England’s most influential literary figures. Best known for works such as Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence explored human relationships, emotional truth, sexuality, nature, and the tensions between industrial society and individual freedom. His work continues to resonate with contemporary audiences around the world.

Further information on public events, poetry readings, and participation opportunities will be announced in due course. For more information, please send an email to sevhagers@gmail.com.