Amerah Saleh writes from the in-between—between Yemen and Birmingham, between Arabic and English, between what is carried and what is left behind.
Hers is a voice shaped by movement. Born in the Middle East and raised in the Midlands, Amerah grew up with two maps in her hands—one drawn by memory, the other by migration. Her poetry doesn’t try to choose between them. It lives in the space between, holding contradictions without apology.
She writes with clarity and care about identity, faith, family, exile, and return. About what it means to belong everywhere and nowhere. Her debut collection, I Am Not From Here, captures that dislocation with precision—an unfolding of the questions so many second-generation voices live with but rarely see reflected: What does it mean to feel foreign in your own skin? What does homeland mean when it lives only in stories?
Amerah Saleh’s words have reached global stages and quiet classrooms alike. She opened the
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games with a poem that honoured the city’s complexity—not the polished postcard version, but the Birmingham of mothers, market stalls, prayer rooms, and bus routes. The Birmingham that made her.
Beyond the stage, her impact lives in the spaces she builds and the conversations she holds open. She creates room for Muslim women, for children of diaspora, for those still finding their place between cultures and languages—without needing to explain or translate who they are.
Amerah Saleh doesn’t write to simplify. She writes to reflect what’s real.
To show that identity can be layered, rooted, and shifting all at once.
And through every poem, every performance, every page, she creates space—for herself, and for others—to belong fully, just as they are.
Because for Amerah Saleh, poetry is more than words.
It is inheritance. It is invitation. It is home.
