About Me

Cardiff based Taz Rahman's first poetry collection is forthcoming in February 2024 from Seren Books. He is part of the 2023 Hay Festival 'Writers at Work' programme, and was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize 2022, and was also awarded a place in the Representing Wales writer development programme by Literature Wales in 2021. He is the reader's committee chair of the leading poetry magazine Poetry Wales and part of the editorial team for climate emergency themed literary magazine Modron. He founded Wales' first Youtube poetry channel Just Another Poet in 2019 to widen access to poetry and poets.

Publications: His first full length poetry collection shall be published by Seren Books in February 2024. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in multiple issues of Poetry Wales, Bad Lilies, Propel Magazine, Anthropocene Poetry, South Bank Poetry, Honest Ulsterman, Abridged Magazine,  Planet - The Welsh Internationalist, Barddas, The Lonely Crowd, Atrium Poetry and ‘Gwrthryfel/Uprising’ An Anthology of Radical Poetry from Wales (Carreg Gwalch, 2022).

Literary Awards & Bursaries: Hay Festival 'Writers at Work' 2023 cohort, he was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2022 for his poem 'Ramadan', was a joint winner of the 2022 International Dylan Thomas Day poetry competition, and the 2021 Representing Wales writer development programme award by Literature Wales with mentorship from Poetry Wales editor Zoë Brigley. In 2020, he was selected as one of seven emerging poets by Literature Wales for a week-long poetry masterclass with Queen's Medal winning poet Gillian Clarke, and also by Writerz and Scribez for a six-week poetry mentorship with Forward Prize winner Caleb Femi.

Editorial: He is an editor of the climate emergency focused literary journal Modron alongside Zoë Brigley  and Kristian Evans. He has been serving as the chair of Poetry Wales magazine's Readers' Committee since September 2022. He is a poetry collection peer-reviewer for the Books Council of Wales and a regular reviewer for Poetry Wales. 

 

Competition Judging: He was one of three judges for the inaugural Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition 2021.

Biography: Taz Rahman spent his very early years in Dhaka, Bangladesh, attended school in Birmingham and university in Cardiff. He had lived in Cardiff for thirty years. He started writing poetry in 2019 and has also written short fiction, essays, reviews and plays. 

Just Another Poet: He founded the acclaimed Youtube poetry promotion channel 'Just Another Poet', which had received Wales Books Council's New Audience Funding (2022/23) and had won a Literature Wales commission (2020).

Other Creative & Editorial Associations: He is the founder and general editor of the long-running legal news blog LawNewsIndex and serves on the advisory board of the community arts promotion organisation Head4Arts. In his other life as a professional photographer, his photographic depiction of political protests in South Wales have been published nationally and internationally, and his fine art portraiture has been featured in group exhibitions for 'Made in Roath' in Cardiff, and in West Bromwich. 

General Interests: His major interests include climate change and preservation of habitats, the language of trauma, jazz and early classical music, historical and contemporary art, south-east Wales waterways, enlightenment philosophy, history of the late antique period, culinary flavours, cats and river fowls. He served as a volunteer listener for the Cardiff Samaritans for eight years and is passionate about supporting mental health awareness.   

Academic Education: He attended secondary school in Birmingham, West Midlands and subsequently pursued an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Cardiff University. He also has a master’s degree in social philosophy and ethics from the same institution and had previously studied for another masters in religion in late antiquity.

Contact: https://tazrahman.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html