Rumuz E Bekhudi presents a poem that speaks to a worldwide audience of English learners or non-native speakers of English who carry with them a desire, a need and a compulsion. Rumuz’s poem betrays the brevity of its verses by thematically expanding on the significance of “English Medium” education throughout the world, inviting critique and reflection on questions of class mobility, rank, status, inclusion, exclusion, colonialism, imperial history, globalization—all tucked under the exhausted white collar of middle-class aspirations.
Gaash — A Call to Remembrance
On August 18th of 1990, Parveena Ahangar’s 17-year-old son Javaid Ahmed was taken by a specialized counter-insurgency group (the National Security Guards of the Indian Army) during a night raid at her neighborhood in Batamaloo, Srinagar. Since then, her quest to find her son and her demand for justice persist. At this 32nd year since Javaid’s enforced disappearance, this poem makes a call to remembrance for those who stand in solidarity with his mother Parveena and with the many Kashmiri families she represents as Founder of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, Kashmir.
MUSIC FEATURE: A Song by Kristina Jacobsen Inspired by Ather Zia’s Poem “i. will. cross.” + Exclusive Interview with the Two Professors
In a rare and unprecedented instance, two professors from two different cultures meet at the crossroads of verse and song to produce a creative collaboration around the themes of Indigeneity, marginality, war, colonization, and erasure. The result is an adaptation of Professor Ather Zia’s poem “i. will. cross.” into a song composed and performed by Professor Kristina Jacobsen. Along with Kristina Jacobsen’s song recording (mixed and mastered by Drake Hardin), we reproduce Ather Zia’s poem as well as a recorded recitation by the poet (republished from Sapiens via CC BY-ND 4.0), followed by an exclusive Q&A with the two professors and a list of relevant links for those interested in their extensive work.
We cross the Red Sea every day — Two Poems by Miran Gulzar
Miran Gulzar presents two poems that counterpose erasure, grief and loss with faith, memory and remembrance. In the first poem, snow offers a momentary lapse that shrouds grief and reconciles it with loss, while finally placing a funerary drape over the world of “the unburied.” “Religious allusions” in the second poem sustain its verses and hold them steadfast before the impositions of power that selectively force shut the gates of certain places meant for prayer and devotion.
Children of the Silent God — A Poem by Khurram Muraad Siddiquie
Khurram Muraad Siddiquie presents verses that reflect on a type of abandonment enshrined in centuries of solitude.
The world had loosened its tie — Two Poems by Glen Armstrong
Glen Armstrong presents two disquieting poems that move from the space of a family home into the pits of war.
I Am a Temple of Worship With Trinket Dreams — Two Poems by Michael Lee Johnson
Michael Lee Johnson presents two poems, one that reflects on the lives of poets and the other on the passage of time as life goes on. Such verses emerge from a poetic voice that has seen joy and grief, youth and age, vulnerability and persistence, in ways that only time can make known.
Being There — A Poem by Mubashir Karim
As the first month of this year comes to a close, we publish a poem by Mubashir Karim about the year that went by. Such verses are rooted in hope that is grounded and poised.
All This Helplessness, Heaped Over Us Like a Blanket — Three Poems by Saadia Peerzada
Saadia Peerzada presents three poems that are woven together by solitude, transience and momentary reflection. Verses such as these elucidate how poetry can emanate from quotidian situations, from a visit to a grocery store to a moment of transit, to a moment of introspection before heading to class. In that mode, these verses serve as a testament to the poetic gaze that retrieves (otherwise) lost poetry from everyday life.
You’ll Never Recognise Yourself Again — Four Prose-Poems by Oz Hardwick
Oz Hardwick presents four prose-poems where a poetic archaeology excavates for meaning in spaces meant for display, where dioramas abound, while a poetic gaze retrieves meaning from objects representing the past in its defunct state. In these poems, one could easily ponder on the museumification of life as the preservation of death, and that too in material overabundance put on display. A poetic voice disrupts the frigid nature of such spaces, turning stillness into motion, and offering sense beyond purpose to elaborate arrangements, but not without necessary critique.
Radio Kashmira — A Six-Part Poem by Kapil Kachru
In his six-part poem, Kapil Kachru versifies the experience of someone returning to a motherland from a great distance marked by the passage of greater time. Part by part, the poem progresses through the gaze of a tourist whose vantage point shifts to that of someone seeking a home worn out by an untimely departure. As ‘travel literature’, Kachru’s verses oscillate between the blurry lines of indefinite displacement and momentary familiarity, made clearer by a voyage that spirals into the terrain of concealed memory.
A Poem in Which I Mourn a Friend — by Fadairo Tesleem
Years after the loss of his friend, Fadairo Tesleem brings us a poem in which the young Nigerian poet mourns such an untimely departure with these poised verses that are watered with grief.