I
will be reading as part of the PEN Modern Literature Festival
Rich Mix Venue One: April 2nd 2016 – 2pm / 3.30pm / 7.30pm
35-47
Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA (just off Brick Lane)
2pm to 3.30pm
Harry Man on Maung
Saung Kha
David Berridge
on Dawit Isaak
Kirsten Irving
on Nurmuhemmet Yasin
Jen Calleja on
Gao Yu
SJ Fowler on
Khadija Ismayilova
Dave Spittle
on Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury
Prudence
Chamberlain on Patiwat Saraiyaem and Pornthip Munkhong
Robert Hampson
on Dr Abduljalil Al-Singace
Adam Baron on
Can Dündar and Erdem Gül
As part of the English PEN Modern Literature Fetival,
Steve Fowler has curated a programme of 30 contemporary poets reading in
solidarity with various writers across the world – all of whom are facing
frightening and inhuman threats to their freedom of speech. The injustice and
severity of these cases are disturbing and sadly serve to demonstrate the
increasing importance of an organisation like PEN. PEN brings continual
attention and support to cases across the world in which writers face injustice
and danger, mainly through - and from - issues of censorship.
April 2nd will be an exciting chance to see
an array of contemporary and challenging poets reading new work, but also a
significant platform from which to develop and spread further support for the
essential and ongoing work of English PEN.
My poem was written in support and celebration of the
publisher and poet, Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury (a.k.a.Ahmed Rahir Tutul) and his
continuing bravery and commitment to freedom of expression in Bangladesh.
Shuddhashar
for
Tutul
self-censored beheaded hen
counts backwards from when
beak to blue it was the maybe flight
the someday roosting, broody thought
that rakes the grass and mud for scratch
and turns over kernels dropped from the empyrean
to see in them, the promise speaking
out from air to build a clutch of eggs.
Gender based
attacks: I have severed myself in halves
Vexatious case:
scoured through evenings and nights
Destruction of
equipment/property: in the entirety of my eyes
stamped out, choked down, yoked
dumb axed like eyes shut before hatch
from open mouth spoken, to spoken for
battery said heading for no maybe light
but forced to swallow what it was
along with red feathers, no flight
burials and back to back clipped wings
brushing rumours of those that like you
have heard
Minor assault means:
I am unable to breathe
Criminal
defamation case: plucked the cloud
Abduction
means: my head touches the concrete ceiling
so called it cramps
tongue to caution
the open-eyes in breach of taking air
followed tic to louse in hounding
scared bodies leeched of any more
than just body and taught to scare
a language back inside the flesh.
this state faith; no faith in state and stateless
faith in more than a state of face-down
beaten, almost silence
Threat/intimidation
means: The sky is on the other side of the window
Cadres
means: born blind in your pursuit
Arrest and police remand: await my stretched hand
painted stares eye to golden eye opiate
and slick circled on a rickshaw’s pageant
to see queasy lipped a sunlit blade and watch
as elsewhere others eyeless turn, advise
‘to be careful and not to move around too much.’
to respect the impunity of threats made real
and written on the body and forget
those threatening to write or writing under threat.
Serious bodily
injury means: Air and light
on the other side of the window
The term killing
means: Where did you disappear?
not the compliance of headless chickens
made to cross the ode from throats, to commit
hysteric blank in shying twisted beak and head-down
from sky, as if any of these words might
be taken with the body, or found buried in the neck.
voice in grain picked like gristle from
its passage in the air – is a lie. this is as nothing
that without living still survives.
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