Eastwood, Nottinghamshire — Writers, poets, artists and members of the public gathered at the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum on Saturday, 12 September 2026 for another public programme of The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE, an evolving literary and multimedia exhibition bringing contemporary writing into conversation with memory, migration, heritage and the work and legacy of D. H. Lawrence. The reading, performance and presentation session formed part of the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum’s Heritage Open Days activities, the D. H. Lawrence Festival 2026, and the Benue Book and Arts Festival (BBAAF) 2026.
Opening the programme, Su’ur Su’eddie Vershima Agema, SEVHAGE Lead and CEO and curator of The Optimist’s Incomplete, introduced the exhibition and spoke about the intersections between the project, Heritage Open Days, the D. H. Lawrence Festival and BBAAF. Carolyn Melbourne, Museums and Collections Officer of Broxtowe Borough Council, responsible for the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum, followed with remarks on the life of Lawrence, the museum and the importance of the heritage celebrations.
The readings that followed moved through childhood, grief, freedom, faith, migration, memory and the complicated ways human beings make meaning from their experiences. Kingsley Kenechukwu Okafor opened the readings with his deeply nostalgic poem, ‘The Ones That Stay With Us’, a poem that looks backwards towards the apparent freedoms of childhood. Its remembered world is one of dancing in the rain, distant calls from mothers, roasted corn, warm fires and a time before the adult recognition of what the poem describes as a world marked by cruelty and sadness. Next, Fauziyya Muhammad Kabir presented ‘Bless the Existence’, a short flowery piece that looks at endurance across generations. Centred on a daughter moving through blame, grief and suffering, the poem insists nevertheless on survival and on the possibility of making room for others and of opening doors wide enough, in the poem’s final image, to “accommodate sunshine”.
Picking up from there, Mary Ohanusi read ‘Freedom Is an Illusion’, a philosophical interrogation of choice and agency. The poem asks how free a person can truly be when decisions are shaped by childhood, wounds, fear, love, memory and other forces that may operate beneath conscious awareness. Rather than reaching for an easy answer, it leaves freedom suspended between choice and the often invisible influences that shape the chooser. Agema also read his poem ‘Going Back Is Going Home’ from his collection, I Stumble Into Me Looking for Sunlight, which follows James, an older migrant walking through Brighton while remembering his wife, home and the life they once built together. Chidera Echedom’s ‘Who Said This Before Us?’ brought a more surreal and atmospheric register to the session. Night, rain, jazz, a violinist, candles and a rainbow move through the poem as images of grief, love and uncertainty. Its speaker searches for language adequate to experiences that seem at once intimate and inherited, ending with a striking image of melting “like an ice / on fire.”
Oluwadamilola Rasak’s ‘Haiku for God’ followed next. The short poem focuses on a spiritual contradiction that places sin and love in the same human hands that are then raised towards God, creating a small but searching reflection on faith, imperfection, guilt and devotion. Jide Badmus read ‘The World is a Bat’, from his latest poetry collection, Dawn is an Open Wound, published by Noirledge Publishers. His contribution continued a relationship with The Optimist’s Incomplete that has included both exhibition participation and an earlier public reading connected to the project.
The final stretch of the reading featured Michael Olobadola, author of the thriller novella Owuro Rising, and Sulaimon Sabitu, author of the poetry collection How It Will Be Told, extending the event beyond the individual poems into a broader encounter with contemporary writing and performance. Michael read ‘Blessed be our names’, while Sulaimon read a heavily nostalgic poem, ‘Ode to the City of Love.’ A visitor to the readings also presented a poem read by Sulaimon Sabitu, which reflected the life of DH Lawrence, and this brought the readings to an end.
Following the formal readings, participants continued the conversation before moving into the museum gallery where The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE was on display. Writers whose works formed part of the exhibition were able to encounter their pieces within the museum space and take photographs alongside them.
The Optimist’s Incomplete by SEVHAGE is produced by SEVHAGE ABC4DE, TransitUs and the Benue Book and Arts Festival (BBAAF) in collaboration with the Broxtowe Borough Council and the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum, with support from INKspiredng and Konya Shamsrumi.
