I don’t think in a particular language, I think in poetry and hence you’ll notice an incoherence in the languages I use in my work. I understand what it means to write from the margins and expect danger to follow suit, there are no exceptions. My poetry is inspired from my personal experiences. My poetry is simpler to understand, more connected to the masses, so that people are able to relate to it. I really don’t care about the rules because poetry is meant to question structures. But, there’s a second side of my poetry, which is the poetry I write for the streets. That kind of style is literature oriented, more philosophical, written in a particular form. I write poems of two kinds, the first one is taught in multiple universities across the world. When we are writing in English, there’s a lot of conversation around form. I think when people are getting behind the curtains of virtuality, they tend to say bigger things than when they’re right in front of your eyes, in front of 10,000 people.Ī post shared by SABIKA are the forms you usually explore in your poetry? But having said that, performing on the streets is more likely to feel like an event because the audience on the streets is more mobile, more diverse. Because I write poems for the street, sometimes, criticism comes from people who are salty and don’t approve of the language or style I use and find it unworthy of their tastes. I knew that every time my poetry was published on social media, the kind of threats that I received would not decrease in number.Īnd as active, listening, Muslim woman, this phenomenon of retribution or flak is very, very common. And, for me, an all encompassing societal acceptance does not really matter that much. I think one of the guiding virtues for my poetry was to make the systems uncomfortable. What kind of resistance have you faced over the years while performing protest poetry publicly? My brain is busy writing about revolution. I would love to write about walking, you know, how my feet feel when it’s in cool waters, or how rain feels on the top of my head or how the wind feels from my feet, but I don’t have the privilege to write all of those things. But, if you are from a Muslim background, you have no other choice in the matter. I would like to mention that for poets who come from privileged backgrounds, they have a choice of subjects to write about further. I figured why should I take permission to spread love? I should just do it because my poetry is a weapon to do so. I decided that if hatred can be spread in public spaces, nooks and corners, why can’t I recite poetry about love and justice and equality in the same spaces, and reclaim them and like them about love, and permission for hate? And because of this, I thought my poetry was useless because I wasn’t causing tangible change. In the past couple of years, I would wake up to the news of a Muslim person being lynched on the streets. And then I began to write about gender, and the more I moved out and navigated the world, I realised my own vulnerabilities, my own marginality, as a Muslim woman in this country after I started performing on the streets. I will teach you to be still as an egg and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.I started writing poetry because I had questions about the systems around me, whether it was the society, or the political system. I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I sing to you in the mornings walking round and round your bed and into your face. My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, says the cat, although I am more equal than you. Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing milk from his mother's forgotten breasts. to be cont'd The cat's song BY MARGE PIERCY Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. Mera premi, mera dost, mera noukar, mera khilona kehti hai billi tumhari cHati par ishaaray kartay huay doodh peenay k apni maan k stanoN se jinaiN ab vo bhool chuki hai. Billi Ka Geet Mera, mera, kehti hai billi apna kala punja aagay rakhtay huay.