I can’t say I started off from a place of hope when May came into power. Despite proclaiming herself a feminist, she was never, and will never be, a feminist to me, even as I acknowledge the gender discrimination she faced whilst in power: the gross scrutiny of her body and her clothes, the ‘Maybot’ moniker, and the hyper-focus on her lack of emotions. Yet, she held the most powerful position in this country. She will have a cushy life, and will no doubt go on to do more damage.

The focus on May’s tears, and by extension her ‘humanity’, diverts from her legacy of violence and austerity.

When we demand sympathy for her, we are centring a white woman’s tears in a conversation that  should instead focus on her legacy of harmful immigration and detention policies, the Windrush scandal, the Grenfell tragedy, the dehumanising conditions of Yarl’s Wood, the funding cuts that continue to target the poor, working-class, and the differently abled. May’s co-option of the most superficial language of feminism – highlighting her position as the second female Prime Minister – asks for sisterhood by paying lip-service to the idea of feminism. May’s policies did systemic anti-feminist work and showed an utter disregard for the dignity and lives of the most vulnerable. Her elite white version of feminism is not my feminism.

The focus on May’s tears is like the milkshake discourse all over again. The constant focus on The Wrongs of the Milkshake is draining and demoralising. It seems more attention is paid to the decency and humanity of those who spout hate speech than there is to the real violence of their fascist ideologies.

The Wrongs of the Milkshake narrative detracts from the structural oppression of the marginalised, from the normalising of white supremacist rhetoric.

Instead, this narrative confers a badge of victimhood to the ‘injured’ party and offers them a platform to speak on that victimhood – after all, their freedom of speech must be protected at all costs. So, the likes of Nigel Farage get their own prime time radio shows, and a whole Newsnight feature is devoted to Tommy Robinson in his favourite guise of victim. Meanwhile, ‘funny-tinged’ black and brown bodies are, as tokens, invited on stage to Question Time and Good Morning Britain debates to prove the existence of racism or the personhood of immigrants. Media bastions like the BBC and Sky continue to evade criticisms of legitimising abusive atmospheres, even when claimed by figures like Diane Abbott, whilst still expecting the Afua Hirsches of this world to, once again, take on the burden of explaining racism. How to nurture hope when the loudest voices in the country, with the largest platforms, financial backing, and political clout, wilfully appropriate and perpetuate the Milkshake narrative?

May’s resignation has led to yet another liminal space of uncertainty – and dread. While we’re waiting at the cusp of change, I can’t help thinking of my upcoming trip to the States. I have the privileges that come with a British passport – all I had to do was apply for an ESTA that costs $14 – and yet I am conscious that I will be entering Trump country for the first time. We all know that border spaces are notorious for racialised profiling. To not be nervous that Something Could Happen is a privilege that, as a brown woman, I can’t afford. The political limbo we’re in, in which we wait for a new Prime Minister and for the exact terms of Brexit to seal our own borders, evokes the same deep unease.

Who will be the next ‘leader’? A huge part of me does not care. One of the leading options is a man who thinks Africa would fare better under colonial rule and calls Muslim women in burkas letterboxes.

With the Brexit vote, Trump’s election, Farage winning more than 30% of the vote in the EU elections, we have seen that Anything Can Happen and Things Will Get Worse.

I write from the same place of Not-Hope as when Theresa May became the second female Prime Minister. Having seen the establishment launch a divisive campaign fuelled by racist propaganda in the service of party interests, I am filled only with contempt and disillusionment. Before I cast my vote for the EU elections, I thought: what does it matter? Now as we wait for the next leader, I think: what does it matter? The conversations happening in mainstream politics are so removed from my everyday life that it is easy to ask that question and concede to apathy.

And yet I want to resist apathy. I know it is important. Apathy, too, is a privilege – though I appreciate that for some it is survival.

How to then contain that sense of helplessness and hopelessness? I believe it is important to hold on to anger. To think about our everyday impact. To focus on the little things. I will continue writing, dissecting politics and popular culture with my sister, having difficult conversations with family about right-wing views. I will consciously support loved ones – and myself – through mental health struggles. I will amplify marginalised voices, support alternative media outlets, ask others what they need, read critically, and always say This is Not Good Enough.

I write from a place of Not-Hope and disillusionment with the establishment, but I also write from a place of hope for the rest of us in our everyday lives.

Isha Karki is a writer and freelance editor living in London. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Mslexia and The Good Journal, and is forthcoming in On Relationships, Rosalind’s Siblings and Sunspot Jungle. Her work interrogates the politics of race, cultural identity and sexual violence, and is informed by her Nepali immigrant experience. Her story ‘Love’ is forthcoming in the anthology On Relationships. Support the Kickstarter here. She can be found on Twitter @IshaKarki11.

The post Milkshake tears appeared first on English PEN.

In February, my Irish passport finally arrived. I opened it, read my name and beneath it, my nationality, or rather náisiúntacht. I was an Irish citizen now. I sat down on the stairs and cried. I hadn’t anticipated such an extreme emotional reaction. I have been trying to understand my response ever since.

I’m the first person in my immediate family to acquire an Irish passport. I was raised Protestant in rural North Antrim, born into a conservative, Presbyterian family at the height of the Troubles. My grandfather was an Orangeman. My grandmother kept her tea leaves in a caddy with the Queen on the front. She referred to anything South of Newry as the Free State; a dangerous place to venture with Northern Irish registration plates on your car. We did occasionally travel South; my uncle was a Protestant missionary in Cavan. However, as children, we spent more time visiting English seaside resorts. Back then I already knew I was British not Irish; I referred to England as the Mainland. I’d no idea others might find this problematic. Looking back now, I can see how, entitled as we felt to be British, we were different from the people we met in England. Our accents often proved incomprehensible, shopkeepers refused to believe our locally-printed bank notes were legal tender and in certain places, there was a wariness of the Northern Irish, an underlying suspicion I was too young to understand.

Before the Brexit referendum I’d never felt the need for anything but a British passport. In 1998 the Good Friday Agreement ushered in a period of Northern Irish history where, for the first time in my living memory, it felt acceptable, for a Northern Irish person, to claim a multiplicity of identities.

Three years ago I would have confidently pronounced myself British, yet I’d also have considered myself an Irish writer, part of a rich tradition of artists who’ve lived and worked on this island. I wouldn’t have thought these statements were necessarily contradictory.

The Belfast-born poet, John Hewitt summarised this sense of multiple, co-existing identities, decades before the Good Friday Agreement, “I’m an Ulsterman, of planter stock. I was born in the island of Ireland, so secondarily I’m an Irishman. I was born in the British archipelago and English is my native tongue, so I am British. The British archipelago consists of offshore islands to the continent of Europe, so I’m European. This is my hierarchy of values and, so far as I am concerned, anyone who omits one step in that sequence of values is falsifying the situation.” Most residents of Northern Ireland are familiar with the notion of identity as fluid and complex. As a writer, it’s one of the aspects of our culture I find most fascinating. A great deal of my writing wrestles with belonging and identity.

For me, Brexit threatens my freedom to construct my own complex sense of who I am. A renewed emphasis on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland scares me. If the border is no longer fluid, will we lose the concept of liminal space, where identity can be constructed and adapted to fit the individual? Will we have to choose which side we belong on? I acquired my Irish passport for practical reasons. I wanted to remain a European citizen and continue working in Mainland Europe. I hoped to be able to skip the non-EU line at passport control.

It wasn’t until my first time approaching an airport check-in desk – both passports in hand – that I realised I’d be deciding which side I belonged to every time I used a passport.

The last few years have given me ample opportunity to consider this question. Whilst I still feel a strong affinity to the Scottish people from whom I’m descended and I’ve felt a natural and immediate bond with most Northerners, increasingly I’ve begun to feel alienated from my own long held ideas of Britishness. I’m beginning to realise these notions were more grounded in English identity than any kind of nuanced understanding of the United Kingdom as a whole. I’ve slowly become more sensitive to how Northern Irish people are viewed by many people living in England, a huge proportion of whom have never visited the North of Ireland.

I’m frustrated by the rhetoric coming out of Westminster; politicians who do not take the time to properly research the complex needs of my country and seem to consider us less of an asset than an ongoing headache. I’m annoyed by the portrayal of the Northern Irish in the press; the mistaken assumption that the DUP accurately reflects the majority opinion here. I don’t think I can bear to read another anthology or article which claims to reflect the voices of British Writers and yet contains no work by Northern Irish writers; and don’t even get me started on the Northern Irish stereotypes portrayed by most British television programmes. A cross section of these characters would suggest most of us are terrorists, alcoholics or, at the very least, permanently pissed off. I might sound a little whingey, but when your country’s been part of the UK for almost a century and you still can’t spend an Ulster Bank tenner anywhere South of Newcastle, you have to question whether you’re actually wanted or not.

Recently, when it comes to British identity, I’ve felt like the kid who’s initially delighted to be invited to a classmate’s part only to discover the birthday girl’s mother has forced her to invite everybody in the class, even the children they don’t like.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. It’s just that during the last decade, I’ve had the absolute opposite experience with Ireland. I’ve been consistently made to feel extremely welcome within the Irish arts community, included in festivals, journals and anthologies, positively championed as an Irish writer throughout the world, supported financially and most importantly, ushered into a community of warm support and creative collaboration with my colleagues in the South. It’s difficult to say this and I fully acknowledge that many people within Ireland and the UK would question my right as a Northern Irish Protestant of Scottish descent, to claim any sort of Irish identity. I’ve been through an absolute revolution in my thinking about national identity over the last two years and if I’m honest I feel more affinity with the Irish writing community than I’ve ever felt with British writers (a few notable exceptions withstanding). I now feel as much at home in the South of Ireland as I do in the North.

These are confusing times and my thoughts on nationality and identity are constantly changing. For now, I’ll continue to be both Irish and British. I’ll write Northern Irish on any form which asks me to state my nationality, hoping this allows a certain amount of ambiguity. I’ve not yet used my Irish passport. I’ve chickened out twice at the check-in desk. It’s a big decision for me. The first time I travel as an Irish citizen I’ll be putting a little more distance between myself and the culture I was born into. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it feels momentous right now. It’s been a surprisingly emotional journey.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short story collection, Children’s Children (2016), and a flash fiction anthology, Postcard Stories (2017). Her work has appeared in numerous journals and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 2016 she won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition and was shortlisted for the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. She specializes in running arts projects and events with older people, especially those living with dementia. Her second novel, The Fire Starters, is out now.

The post Being both – a very personal revolution appeared first on English PEN.

At the moment when literature does justice to what it claims for itself, even the literature of apolitical authors is political. And for a simple reason: literature, like art in general, is one of the possible pathways to truth. And the truth is always revolutionary – because we live in ideologically complex systems of perception and have, consciously or unconsciously, veiled reality around us. To that extent the search for truth alone is a political project. There are people, artists, writers who do this consciously, and there are artists who do it unconsciously, with an incomprehensible and inexplicable instinct. That is the difference between Kafka and Brecht.

Give me an example from contemporary literature.

Let me answer that metaphorically. There are artists who build their art like bees build their honeycombs. The bees have no plan, but they build in infinite perfection. And then there are artists who are architects. Everything already exists in their heads. They can reflect on what they do, they can plan it. Of course, there are also mixed forms. There are people who already know what they are doing, but leave a lot of room for instinctive things. In contemporary literature I’m observing an interesting phenomenon. Many authors started their careers with certain political commitments. And they have all now become silent. There is almost an unspoken consensus in this generation: that there is no point. One of the last politically committed authors was Günter Grass. When he died I said that a literary epoch had come to an end.

For my part, I was influenced by authors like Dickens, Èmile Zola, Balzac and Victor Hugo; later also by Latin American literature, which is a great narrative literature, always in opposition to a multitude of dictatorships. So it’s no surprise that I am who I am now. However, I am not at all interested in turning myself into a schizophrenic person: I don’t want anyone to think that I’m an artist one day and an activist the next. When I get politically involved, I do so as an artist. That’s important to me.

It sometimes feels to me as if certain contemporary ‘national’ literatures are more political than others. 

Well, let me give you an example of political literature from the UK where there is no obvious political intention, but where there clearly are political and analytical implications: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which in a way tells the story of the fall of a political empire through a single character.

But Ishiguro wrote this novel twenty years ago. His work has changed since then.

I think that this mood (of not engaging politically via your art) is really getting stronger and stronger – to my great regret. It’s as if people think, ‘When everything is going down the drain, then at least I want to create something beautiful, but there is no point in getting involved in anything.’ On the one hand that is regrettable. On the other hand I’m actually quite happy when certain artists don’t say anything anymore because I have noticed that they are simply not very well-informed. When you talk about the EU with writers, you notice that they simply have no idea what’s going on. Then again, I am very grateful for Elfriede Jelinek – for either putting her finger on the wound or, in an ingenious double stroke, for throwing salt into the wound.

Jelinek and you are of a certain generation of politically engaged writers. For me that begs the question of what comes next – in my generation, for example.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but that is irrelevant. In the end, we have to judge the artistic and aesthetic quality of a work – and its implications, no matter what the author thought. I always like to remember what the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács said: that a work of art is only a work of art if it is smarter than the author.

Let’s talk about the nation state. If the nation state really dies, and this is the ideological goal, then many hurdles must be overcome that have to do with the indoctrination of the people. What must happen for that to happen? I am thinking above all of the media, sport, etc., all of which are in tune with the fact that the nation state is important.

One thing must be said in advance, you cannot abolish the nation state. You can’t sit down and dismantle it. It is a process that operates, just like all historical processes, with many small steps. At the moment when the nation state can no longer do what we expect it to do, it will also stop functioning as a source of identity. Because it’s not simply down to the idea that I need a national identity, because otherwise I wouldn’t know who I am. We expect the nation state to fulfil certain tasks. There will indeed be desperate attempts to equip it radically with everything we expect from it – a brief flourishing of nationalism. But it is clear that it will die in the long run because it can no longer solve many problems: finance, the internet, ecological problems, they are transnational. What we need instead is an upgraded, functional European parliament.

We must also bear in mind how young the idea of the nation is. My grandparents lived in a state and society that had no national idea, but that worked on the basis of a common market, a common currency, a common bureaucracy: the Habsburg Empire. It was destroyed by nationalism. Nationalism as an idea has blood on its hands.

Robert Menasse was born in Vienna in 1954 and studied there before moving to Brazil, where he lived for six years as a professor of literature at the University of São Paulo. He is the author of several novels translated into English, including Wings of Stone and Reverse Thrust, and of a work of non-fiction, Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits: Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight for (2016). In 2017 he was awarded the German Book Prize for Die Hauptstadt (The Capital), which is out in English now, translated by Jamie Bulloch.

Interview conducted and translated by Theodora Danek. With thanks to Corinna Zifko for participating in the conversation.

The post Blood on its hands: a conversation with Robert Menasse appeared first on English PEN.

One of the only emails to come in that day was from Mark Banting, Waterstones’ one-man-events-band champion of translated literature. His message was a rallying cry ‘to celebrate Europe’s past, present and future’. Later, in the downstairs Piccadilly bar, dark humour and wine flowed freely. But as variations on the same question – ‘what are we going to do now?’ – issued back and forth, a quiet determination began to form in response. This is an opportunity, people started to say. We need to redouble our efforts, said others.

So: we need to do something to tell Europe’s stories, to change ‘Brand Europe’. But what role can a festival play in doing that?

When I joined last autumn it was known as European Literature Night (ELN), one of some 50-plus simultaneous ‘nights’ scattered across Europe and concentrated especially in the Czech Republic, where the initiative first began. Most participating cities put on a few local writers, together with some speakers from other parts of the world. What happens in London is a far more involved affair. A judging process invites submissions from UK publishers in partnership with the 33 European cultural institutes and embassies which make up EUNIC London. The submitted authors have to fulfil some unusual criteria: they must be recently published and in excellent translation; they need to speak good English and be engaging speakers and performers; and the final selection should represent a range of European countries, genres and ideas. The six selected writers appear at a showcase event at the British Library, which is the centrepiece of ELN London.

Following ELN’s expansion over the years from a single night into two nights, then three, the idea of re-launching it in 2016 as a fully-fledged festival was a no-brainer. And there’s a lot to cheer about what was achieved. This year ‘ELN’ received 62 entries from 23 countries, an increase of nearly 30% from 2015. According to Rosie Goldsmith, long-time chair of the judges and director of the UK-based European Literature Network, this year’s entries were of the highest standard to date. The final six (four men, two women) were Burhan Sönmez (Turkey), Dorthe Nors (Denmark), Gabriela Babnik (Slovenia), Peter Verhelst (Belgium), Jaap Robben (Netherlands) and Alek Popov (Bulgaria). As well as showcasing them at the British Library, we took them to workshops and school events across London. We branched out into other cities too, with some modest but well-received events in Birmingham, Newcastle and Chichester.

The new festival format gave us freer rein to add in more elements around ELN, and in a blink of an eye we had a six-week ‘season’ of literature from the continent, with more than 60 writers and poets (from 30 cultures) taking part. Some of the highlights included a Don Quixote ‘translation joust’; a poetry night where 20 poets sparked off against each other as part of the ingeniously conceived ‘Enemies Project’; and a packed-to-the-rafters conversation between journalist Misha Glenny and Italian writer Roberto Saviano, who in 90 minutes lifted the crooked lid on London’s complicit role in international crime.

The Translation Pitch, back for a second year in association with English PEN, illustrated why translators aren’t just good for quality writing but can be a book’s best advocate for acquiring editors. The Pitch offered a fast-paced tour of stories and poetry from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Turkey and France, all not yet available in English. Translator James Womack received a special commendation for his entertaining presentation of Antonio Orejudo’s campus novel A Brief Respite (Spain), but Karen Leeder won the day with her exquisite rendering of Ulrike Almut Sandig’s poetry collection Thick of It (Germany).

Our major translation project this year was the Poetry Periscope – or the ‘poetry jukebox’, as it translates from its Czech origins – a bright yellow, two-metre-high sound installation, which first appeared on the Piazza of the British Library in April. It contains recordings of poems from 30 European cultures, each available in their original language and in English translation. Judith Palmer of the Poetry Society helped us to put together this wide-ranging selection, which was designed to represent the ‘voices of Europe’ in all their diversity across age, race and gender. The Periscope is now touring to other venues around the UK, in partnership with regional writing agencies.

If we are fortunate enough to develop the European Literature Festival further and stage it again next year, there is so much more we can do – other forms of storytelling we can bring in, different and unusual spaces we can stage our events. One big idea which is gathering momentum is a European Literature retail promotion, timed to coincide with a fresh edition of the Festival: discounted table displays in bookshops, promotional offers online, supported by a dedicated magazine (handed out at Underground stations, distributed at bookshops and libraries). We need to start with new readers first and then go as far as our resources and energies allow us to travel.

Would all these ideas together help start a different kind of conversation about Europe? The European Literature Festival and any initiatives that spring from it are just a tiny part of the effort, but we all have a role to play. The stories and voices of Europe are needed more than ever to help us make sense of these extraordinary times. In the words of Rosie Goldsmith: ‘In the wonderful world of literature we can be both British, and European.’

Jon Slack is the creative producer for the European Literature Festival, a EUNIC London project co-ordinated with the support of Czech Centre London and the European Commission Representation in the UK. If you would like to be involved in the festival initiatives please get in touch with Jon directly via jonslack.uk@gmail.com, or on Twitter @jonslack.

Photo by Laura Beduz.

Find out more about the European Literature Festival 2016, which took place 27 April – 9 June 2016. Watch highlights from across this year’s Festival.

Photo by PeWu.

The post Telling Europe’s stories appeared first on English PEN.

They are all teenagers, students at a school in south London whom I met for a few weeks to do some creative writing and translation, in my capacity as the Free Word Centre’s Translator in Residence. They all went through the wrench of migration when they were very young; compared to them I had it easy when I moved from Poland to the UK in my late 20s. They will all grow up in a country going through a gigantic wrench of its own.

It’s impossible to predict the long-term consequences of the referendum. If these young people choose to stay in the UK, will their identities be subject to increased scrutiny, their multilingualism and difficult-to-pronounce surnames a cause for suspicion? If they stay and naturalise (are they not natural enough?), will they need a visa to attend a university in their birth country? How much more difficult will they find it to be in touch with all parts of who they are? If they chat with a friend in Portuguese on the bus, will someone tell them they were voted out of the country and should leave? Nobody knows, but this much is certain: people like them – people like me – were used in the lead-up to June 23^rd as shorthand for everything that is wrong with the status quo.

The aftermath of the referendum was quite an emotional rollercoaster for me. I was angry that it called into question principles I valued in this country. I was angry that it would throw the UK into economic and political disarray. I was furious at the inevitable deepening of social divisions and the limitation of opportunities for science and culture. I felt a bit sorry for myself, for the years I spent learning and teaching English, immersing myself in British literature, culture and habits, translating English novels into Polish. In fact, I translate and interpret both ways – into and out of Polish – and have mediated between these two languages in more ways than I could have imagined when I first began an MA course taught entirely in English (although it was based in the good old Polish city of Sosnowiec).

Somewhere in Poland there’s a tape recording of a three-year-old me singing ‘Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?’ in a reedy little voice. I have my opinions about the right way to eat a scone (cream first, jam second) and the funniest sentence in Withnail and I (we can discuss it over a quadruple whisky). All this sticks in my craw slightly: now it seems like the UK doesn’t return the feelings.

More than for myself, I felt sorry for the people who felt so out of place in their own country that they were compelled to vote ‘Leave’, and immensely sorry for the immigrants who have been quietly (maybe illegally, probably precariously) working night shifts in hospitals, at Tube stations and for construction companies to keep things going. To say this was a slap in the face for them is an enormous understatement.

I felt grimly gleeful about the whole sorry spectacle and morbidly interested in how the UK intended to deal with this unprecedented situation. You want ‘Keep calm and carry on’ to feel like a real challenge again, not just a slogan on a tea towel? Here you have it.

I am aware that some people voted ‘Leave’ for reasons unrelated to the issue of immigration. However, what it means for those millions of us who live in the UK and are more than one thing, have more than one home (or none), more than one language, more than one passport (or none), is that suddenly another layer of decisions about us will be made without us. We’ll be present in this country only as shorthand, if at all. One would think that the UK – of all places – would have already processed both the idea that you might go abroad to improve your economic situation and the idea that it is possible and even desirable to integrate people from elsewhere into your society. But it seems there is some way to go on this.

Like immigrants, translators are more than one thing; we reach beyond, we mediate, provide hospitality, carry across (choose your favourite metaphor). We have found other cultures which fascinate us and which we feel have something valuable to say about being human. We’ve travelled, eaten surprising food, listened to music with unexpected rhythms, got lost in alien streets – and we’ve considered ourselves richer for all that, and wanted to share it.

Maybe we feel so frustrated by this new reality that we want to act.

My plea to translators is: go for longhand. Go against the tendency to simplify or eliminate. Put in the effort, in whatever way suits you best, to emphasise nuance. Remind people (readers, students, pupils, friends, users of local libraries, reading groups, festival audiences, community groups, prison writing groups, courts, cultural organisations, policy makers, neighbours, everyone else) of the worth of abundance and openness. If you can, go beyond the page and into volunteering, lobbying, creating opportunities. Other languages and cultures have sustained us – there’s no better time to return the favour.

Discover PEN-supported European writers on the World Bookshelf.

Tickets are on sale for International Translation Day 2016, the biggest annual UK gathering of literary translators – taking place in London on Friday 30 September.

Find out about London mayor Sadiq Khan’s post-Brexit #LondonIsOpen campaign.

Read about English PEN’s work with multilingual young people in London: Brave New Voices.

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