Hanan Issa

Hanan Issa is a Welsh-Iraqi poet, filmmaker, and artist. Her publications include her poetry collection My Body Can House Two Hearts, Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales and her children’s poetry anthology And I Hear Dragons. Her winning monologue With Her Back Straight was performed at the Bush Theatre as part of the Hijabi Monologues. She is part of the writersroom for Channel 4’s award-winning series We Are Lady Parts. Her work has been featured on Radio 3 and Radio 4. Her short film The Golden Apple - a Ffilm Cymru/ BBC Wales commission is available on iPlayer. She was the 2023 Hay International Fellow and is the current National Poet of Wales until 2027.

[Photo credit: Billie Charity and Hay Festival]

'And I Hear Dragons' by Hanan Issa

A brilliant childrenʼs poetry anthology of ʻdragon-focusedʼ poems, conceived and edited by the National Poet of Wales, Hanan Issa.

A ground-breaking new anthology from diverse Welsh writers is aimed at children aged between eight and twelve. ...And I Hear Dragons, explores the concept of identity, and Hanan has written a poem of the same name that ʻcelebrates the children of Wales as ferociously brave mythical beastsʼ, taking on discrimination, pollution etc, and upholding Walesʼ tradition of croesawgar (welcoming).