Kurdish Poet’s ‘Mending’ Set To Music In London Opera
A poem by Kurdish poet Sarwa Azeez was sung by Soprano Samantha Crawford at London’s Holy Sepulchre church as part of a refugee-themed song cycle by Raymond Yiu.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - A poem about a mother darning socks in the shadow of war, written by Kurdish poet Sarwa Azeez, has been set to music and performed in London as part of a song cycle about the lives of refugees and displaced people. A video shows soprano Samantha Crawford singing “Mending,” accompanied by pianist Berrak Dyer, at the Holy Sepulchre church on Holborn Viaduct. The video’s description dates the recording June 18, 2025, while the organizers listed the concert for June 19, 2025.
“Mending” is one of five poems in “The Names of the Earth,” a song cycle by composer Raymond Yiu that sets stories from real refugee accounts first published in the literary magazine the other side of hope. The others are “Stranger” and “I See You” by Priscilla Okoye, “when you talk your language” by Tatiana Dolgushina and “The names of the Earth” by Alberto Quero, according to the magazine. The cycle was newly commissioned for “Freedom Cries Out,” a programme of new music created by Crawford in 2024 to tell the stories of displaced people and refugees. The concert was staged in partnership with Refugee Education UK and also included works by Errollyn Wallen, Cecilia McDowall, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Roxanna Panufnik. The programme explores homeland, exile, war, family, hope and new beginnings. The video description says it had support from organizations such as the Vaughan Williams Foundation.
According to the video description, “Mending” was chosen for its evocative and heart-wrenching portrait of the contemporary refugee experience. The poem sets the small, daily labor of a mother repairing socks against the devastating reality of a crushed home and the loss caused by war, and speaks to the resilience needed to “mend” a torn world. The project’s aim is to give a voice to people who have been uprooted, turning individual heartbreak into a collective “chorus of hope” for voices that have long gone unheard.
Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, essayist and Fulbright scholar. She holds a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Leicester and a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of the poetry collection “Remote,” published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her poetry and prose have appeared in World Literature Today, Collateral Journal, the other side of hope, ONE ART, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Women Writing for a Change and elsewhere. Iraqi media have reported that much of her writing draws on a difficult childhood in the Kurdistan Region after the Gulf War and the 1991 uprising.