It feels like we’re entering an epoch of apocalypses, but so few of us have the energy left to do anything about it. How do you combat engineered moral apathy on such a scale? From which wells can we draw to ignite our collective creative energies? How can we hope to weather what comes?

I don’t know, nor do I think the answer is simple. But as the days and weeks lap into one another, a constant that has helped dispel some of my hopelessness and remind me of art as something other than escape has been Hip-Hop. What we know today as Hip-hop was birthed from a creolised synthesis of different diasporic cultures mixing in the heart of the Bronx, conceived as an expressive tool to give voice to the creativity, love, and anger of the residents of one of New York’s most impoverished boroughs. Hip-hop emerged from the harshest of conditions to consecrate itself as a precious platform for stories of love and histories of rebellion.

Genres analogous to Hip-hop have always been present in my life, with Reggae, Dub, Jazz, and Soul featuring as background music to memories of weekends cleaning the house or family dinners around the table. I see my love for Hip-Hop as a natural evolution from the habitus that was being built around me. The first Hip-hop album I remember hearing was College Dropout by Kanye West in 2005. My older brothers were able to sneak the CD away from my Dad when he wasn’t looking, and in our bedrooms we’d huddle around a busted CD player and listen to a young man from Chicago wax lyrical about his troubled life and hunger for ambition. I didn’t quite understand what I was hearing at the time, yet there I was, a 5-year-old walking around the house rapping “I’ve been working this grave-shift And I ain’t made shit/ I wish I could buy me a spaceship and fly”. What I knew at the time about the perils of retail labour and low wages was next to nil, but there was something both fantastical and familiar about the worlds contained within those records. It was only when I got older that I began to fully grasp the financial struggles that coloured my early years, making me feel things at the time that I couldn’t explain. Perhaps that’s why I felt an affinity to the music; it was offering words and insights to help me better situate my own experience in histories and systems so much bigger than me.

From Blues to Gospel to Negro Spirituals, Hip-Hop follows in a long line of Black musical traditions which oppressed peoples have used  to envision alterities and fantasise better futures. The throughline between the music I grew up with and the music of my parents is that it was always more than artistic expression, it was a portal into a Black interiority that contained love, misery, and plans for escape and salvation. Hip-Hop is just one of the newer sonic iterations of what Black people across the diaspora have done since surviving their abduction from Africa and the harrowing middle passage.

Although the Kanye of today is a gross and tragic shell of his former self, I think the essence of Hip-Hop can most aptly be captured in that one bar of his in Gorgeous:‘Is Hip-Hop just a euphemism for a new religion? / The soul music of the slaves that the youth was missing.’ For me, there is something integral in this short verse – in how it connects Hip-Hop’s ties to the past and illustrates the link between the music of people who were grappling with their own apocalypses – and the music of today. It would be remiss to ignore the context of chattel slavery that made the sonics of enslaved people so urgent and complex; there are, of course, stark differences between the liberties we find ourselves afforded in relation to those before us. But the world in which we find ourselves comes with its own challenges. So when faced with forces seemingly beyond our control, looking back to when a group of people suffered an apocalyptic event can provide perspective to look at the tools they used to help them survive. The music of our past – and by extension art – has been used to communicate and contain powerful messages, evoking ideas of hope, while also having hidden messages codified in them to aid in escape and community building. Those same mechanics were not lost in time but trickled down and manifested themselves in the melodies and rhymes of some of my favourite MCs. From Mos Def’s ‘Umi Says’ to Noname’s ‘Rainforest’, to Denzel Curry’s ‘Walkin’ – Hip-Hop’s more radical essence has somewhat endured.

Yet, as is the case with many other counter cultural forms, over time, it has become subsumed in a capitalist model of production that has championed consumerism over struggle, making hyper-visible braggadocio and machismo in some of the genre’s biggest stars of today (think Drake pushing 40 and still rapping about how many women he’s slept with and how much money he has). Despite this, the genre is still very diverse and is more than the sum of its parts, with artists still managing to retain some essence of what made the genre so impactful to me as a child. Some of my first pieces of writing were 16 bars I’d try to frantically write out to rap over random type beats on YouTube, or to have freestyle battles with my brothers and cousins and friends. It was the first form of poetry that made sense to me, when all other forms I encountered in the Western cannon made me see myself in the third person, through the eyes of some European writer I was told I had to respect. Beyond seeing the value of Hip-Hop as an artform born from strife, I don’t have to listen to a song delivering some grandiose political treatise for me to consider it radical. Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is arm someone with a framework to regulate and understand themselves when they feel like everything else around them doesn’t make sense. For me, the Hip-Hop album that would do that was Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.

I was 15 when I first heard To Pimp a Butterfly and had been following Kendrick’s journey since Section 80 and good kid, m.A.A.d city, but nothing could have prepared me for the beautiful chaos this album delivered. The album wears its influences on it sleeve, with elements of Jazz and Funk all over the album, colliding to illustrate the joy, pain, and contradictions endemic in Black America (and across the diaspora). The album is aspirational in what it attempts to strive towards, namely a reclamation of the humanity Kendrick feels has been stripped away from him and other Black Americans having grown up under carceral logics that negate their self-confidence and modes of expression. The album endeavours to be a wake-up call to love yourself despite the ways the world has hurt you. It was no surprise to me then that when the uprisings of 2020 began, and the air was electrified by a chorus of shouts demanding the deconstruction of systems of oppression, songs like Kendrick Lamar’s Alright were playing at protests.

Alright encapsulates the undulating hope one must have to imagine a world beyond the pain you might be experiencing. The track’s opening lines (also an interpolation of a speech from Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple) demand your attention by focussing on the mortal danger of life under the intersecting systems of racism and poverty, and how these systems make marginalised people combatants in games we never asked to play. As the song continues, it reaches its hook and culminates in the refrain ‘We go’n be alright’. It’s these few lines that you could hear often repeated at different protests, from the time of the songs release up until the uprisings of 2020 and today. The song borrows from the repetitive nature integral in the spirituals of the past in how its mantra-like chants engage audiences in a rhythm you can hold onto that matches your movement as you march along with it. I think songs like ‘Alright’ functionally and thematically hit that same resonance as the music from which they descend: they uplift and inspire us to resist the overbearing assaults on our daily lives and liberties.

Kendrick commented on the song in an interview with NPR some years ago, “Four hundred years ago, as slaves, we prayed and sung joyful songs to keep our heads level-headed with what was going on… Four hundred years later, we still need that music to heal. And I think that Alright is definitely one of those records that makes you feel good no matter what the times are.” While Hip-Hop can encode in its lyrics a belief that things can change, and that there is something better waiting for you beyond the hell you might be experiencing, it can also offer glimpses into much bleaker realities. Realities that assert that our world is beyond saving, that the damage is done, that – to borrow from one of Public Enemy’s lyrics – ‘Armageddon, it been in effect.’

I was 17 when I first heard Kendrick’s next album, and the world was emerging into a different place for me. I was entering my last few years of secondary school and beginning to question what it was I wanted to do with my life. I was lost and perhaps yearning for that same ecstatic feeling I was used to getting when a new Kendrick album came out. So, I pressed play, and then my optimism fell apart.

In DAMN, Kendrick takes a decidedly darker approach, with his machinations taking on dystopic tones. The world reflected in it is steeped in pain, a world Kendrick feels is out of control and out of sync with the hopes and dreams he once had. There doesn’t seem to be a way he believes we can remain like this. There is no tomorrow. These thematic threads appear in songs like FEAR, where he recounts instances of living closely with death, doubt and fear, opening the song with a monotone mantra that sluggishly spills his woes.

Why God, why God do I gotta suffer?
Pain in my heart carry burdens full of struggle
Why God, why God do I gotta bleed?
Every stone thrown at you restin’ at my feet
Why God, why God do I gotta suffer?
Earth is no more, won’t you burn this muh’fucka?

It’s easy to see where his cynicism may have sprouted from. In the year before this album’s release, Black Lives Matter, as a movement and protest, gained significant traction in the wake of the brutal executions of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota. In conjunction with his growing rise to rap stardom and fans’ expectations of his political responsibility and other personal demons, DAMN culminates in a striking repudiation that the world as we know it can’t be saved.

It’s hard to salvage belief in a world you have become acquainted with through violence, and even harder to think it can be saved. Some Hip-Hop artists recognise this and continue a tradition of earthly rejection used by their ancestors, with folk music and Negro Spirituals possessing thematic similarities in how they can dismiss our material world in search of something else. Those who have abandoned notions of the world’s salvation are not inherently negative or naïve but seek to reemerge from the social relations that bind them into something new.

It’s been eight years since DAMN came out, yet we still find ourselves surrounded by images of death and state violence – continually enduring small daily traumas and sometimes feeling like it will not get better. Death by a thousand cuts. As artists and creatives living in an age in which we are encouraged to dismiss critical analysis as wasteful and see art as pure entertainment and escape, tracing the threads of Hip-Hop, from the past to the present, has helped me to continue seeing art as a weapon capable of arming you with a means to communicate and inspire. Hip-hop has reminded me that this latest iteration of terror only follows in a long line of others that our ancestors have fought in many forms.

In a video on the rap artist MAVI, writer Tosin Balogun discussed hip-hop and its place in times of crisis:

Creating art out of suffering is a haunting, if not a futile endeavour. Deep down, we must know we can’t be saved by colours on a canvas or words on a page. We must know we are chasing a sun that will never set, yet, we are unable to stop. We write and we sing, and we draw and every momentary reprieve from the gaping maw of despair, we attribute to our creativity. The truth is art can’t save the world. Art can only make the world look at itself.

Hip-Hop itself will not save me or you. But I believe art in times of crisis to be the connective tissue that binds us and helps us understand ourselves. I still wake up every day not knowing the exact right way to help things get better. Or I feel disheartened, like I’m not doing enough. The answers to my fears are mine to wrestle with, but the important thing is that I surround myself with things that inspire me to keep going. It is not the song that’s important, but the feeling it’s left me with. It is what I choose to do after I take the headphones off. The apocalypse is here, but it has been with us for some time now, and what lies beyond capitalism is a mystery to me. But what I know for certain is that I don’t want to be dispossessed of my ability to try and imagine something different.

The post Hip-Hop & the Apocalypse appeared first on English PEN.

How many generations does it take for a culture to become native? For the tattoos of names and labels to set in blood, for postures to solidify in bones? By whose volition do the branches of trees become tresses: poets, and dreamers, who claim the language of the stars. The language of this poetry is often luxurious, but the poetry itself is not a luxury. In fact, to truly appreciate it, you’d have to have let every object, everything go, (at least once), as Bulleh Shah or Ghulam Farid, two Panjabi mystics, have said.

I’m addressing the notion of an attachment to one’s native or ethnic culture. A culture itself, in spite of its perceived nativity, was also once born and invented. Is it my perceived nativity of Panjabi folk music that calls me to it? Is it something in the blood and the bones?

Summer 2023 in Manchester. I’m at my friend Ràjveer’s house, and we’re celebrating his dad’s birthday by having a mehfil. I’m standing by a laptop with my friend – Spotify open – and he tells me ‘I’ve got a song for you.’ He selects the Punjabi Mehfil Vol. 1 album, plays Ghulam Ali and Afshan’s ‘Methoon Peeche Kyoon’, which isn’t the actual name of the song. ‘These recordings are a mess’, he tells me. That song becomes my most played song of the year.

How did this happen? Before 2023, my Spotify Wrapped would usually be a United Nations meeting of genres; dominated primarily by US rap. In 2024, four of my top five most-listened-to songs were Panjabi folk songs, and they had an average length of 17 minutes and 58 seconds.

One of my top songs was ‘Janda Hoya Das Na Gaya…’ by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Nusrat was one of the most popular South Asian musicians, chiefly a proponent of qawwali music, but also of other religious-musical traditions in the region, as well as Panjabi folk music. In the chorus, Nusrat sings:

Janda hoya das na gaya
chitthi keri watan wal paava.
(He left without telling me where he was going
to which homeland should I send my letter?)

Spotify was just one plot in the digital garden I was cultivating. I have a flowing saved folder on Instagram, growing fast and wide, alongside a TikTok bank and YouTube playlists for more unsung varieties. The YouTube algorithm began recommending songs to me with less than 100 views, many of which would then enter my playlists. I brought together Panjabi geets, qawwalis, shabads, bhajans, naats and filmi songs. I found live stage recordings with camera setups, as well as simple recordings of singers out in nature or in their homes. Naturally, each of these expressions have a different flavour. The stage recordings are usually more planned and grandiose, sometimes lasting for over forty minutes. The recordings from folk singers out in nature, while generally much shorter, are the most memorable for me. They have simultaneously the worst and best video quality; the smallest in pixels, but greatest in heart.

In one of my favourite videos, Sain Bodhi Shah sings verses from one of the most popular and culturally significant poems, Heer. Heer was born in the 18th century, written by poet and mystic Waris Shah. The poem breathes Panjabi culture: the ploughed land, the brazen passion, the floaty faced jogis, the juggernaut hearts. The poem is, in an outward sense, a tragic love story between the characters Heer and Ranjha. Waris Shah, in a move atypical of his time, used the colloquial language of the people to write his story; choosing not to write in respected languages which had an existing poetic reputation such as Farsi. Shah’s story presents a female lead character who breathes with agency, who raises her voice as if it is her birthright. The story and its characters remain symbols of courage today, reinvigorating spirituality in people and reminding them of the beauty and dignity in their culture, the crimson love in their blood.

As a child of diaspora, it might be redundant to say I grew up dealing with the echoes of another world; sometimes harnessing them, sometimes drowning them out. Music and poetry are so integral to Panjabi culture, where lifetimes of folk songs and annals of poems are widely bestowed the honour of memorisation. Just the evocation of the first beat of a song or poem will inspire a passionate response from many a Panjabi – a turning and raising of the hand, a glowing smile and a headshake, and any combination of ‘aahaa!’, ‘wah!’, ‘Allah!’, ‘Waheguru!’ and ‘kya baat hai!’.

There’s something in the English terms ‘folk song’ or ‘folk music’ that, to me, evoke the archaic or the unpopular. Until very recently, I would have said there’s a stark contrast in the reality of these terms and music in the Panjabi language – but with the growing popularity of musicians such as Diljit Dosanjh and AP Dhillon, you now might have to specify that you mean ‘the classics’ when you want to tell someone you’re into Panjabi folk music. The likes of Diljit Dosanjh and AP Dhillon have found an international audience which includes non-Panjabi speakers, while the audience of the folk music remains predominantly limited to Panjabi speakers.

Panjabi poems and folk songs can perhaps be characterised by their cutting, undressing honesty – something which, in the past, caused anger to be levelled at writers and singers. Bulleh Shah wrote of delicate and beaming divine connection, yet he criticised the funnels of organised religions that were widely practiced in his time. He writes:

Panj veylay lok, aashiq har veylay
Lok maseethi, aashiq qadma vich.
(Five times, for the people (referring to prayer); the aashiq, all the time.
The people, in the mosque, the aashiq in their footsteps.)

Bulleh Shah challenges the limitation of prayer to a place of worship, suggesting that prayer should be something embodied. The aashiq is one who embodies ishq, a divine, transcendental love, which exists beyond human divisions such as race and religion. Bulleh Shah was chastised in his time for his beliefs by those whose mono-religious edifices could not contain such multiplicity; such horizon-shattering love. His poems have been famously sung by Abida Parveen, who has breathed new life into Bulleh’s poetry in the 20th and 21st centuries. I hope to see her perform live one day.

While the mehfil in the summer of 2023 was a defining moment, an earlier, equally important moment took place in 2020. I came across a YouTube channel called The Dream Journey, which records live folk music performances across Pakistan. The most popular videos on the channel feature English subtitles – perfect for modern engagement, or for those of us in the diaspora who might not completely understand their mother tongue,I was already writing at that time and was drawn to writing through a perennial or spiritual lens – one that could, as well as satisfy my metaphysical longing, encompass the two cultures I inhabited.

Na fanaa meri, na baqaa meri
(I can claim neither impermanence nor infinite existence)

These words, written by Kabir Das, were sung on the channel by Maulvi Haider Hassan Vehranwale. The video features a whole qawwal party singing together, which included both the young and the old. As a 20-year-old, the majority of my age mates weren’t interested in traditional music and metaphysical topics like that. I’d sometimes feel internally that I was too young to be thinking about all this so deeply, but seeing children in this video, who in some moments sang louder than the lead vocalists without mics, I felt affirmed.

Still, internally, there lingered a feeling that all of this was too serious, and this was not normal early-20’s-occupation. It could be said that this notion of age and time is a Western one, and to a great degree I feel it is. But truthfully, I also faced the surprise of family and peers, who saw me getting into this music and poetry that was “before my time” and doing so “before” the time I was supposedly ready to. Societally, an association has been made between asceticism and age, as well as age with knowledge and wisdom. But I couldn’t rest with this notion.

One of my top songs on Spotify in 2024 was 38:18 minutes long. I’m trying to think of juxtapositional equivalents to short and long songs: A speedboat ride and an excavation, A TV episode and a film. Most of these longer songs are live recordings, and they feature the additions of audience sounds and musical mistakes, which wouldn’t be found in a studio recording. In a world where commitment and an attention span are often deemed hard to come by, or worse,relics of a bygone era,there’s something radical and humbling about engaging with music in this way. More satiating.

What we choose to dedicate our free time to are things we love and care for, right? I would be remiss not to mention that the spirituality of the music, or its appeal to my sense of diasporic dislocation, were not strong enough to take so much of my time and attention. It’s not just the song, it’s the life it is attached to; of the tears I have given to this music, most have been for love. For romantic, platonic, familial, and humanist love. Baba Farid writes:

Kaga sab tan khaiyo, mera chun chun khaiyo maas
do naina mat khaiyo, mohe piya milan ki aas
(O crow, eat all of my body, chew and chew at my flesh, but don’t eat my two eyes, for I have hope of meeting my beloved.)

Many Panjabi folk songs are about heartbreak and separation, and some of the resolutions in the lyrics are soothing and transcendental (I was just trying to get over my ex! I wasn’t trying to transcend my physical body!)

Tears, also, for a vision of cultural renaissance: the wearing of colours that are seldom worn anymore, the lonely feathers of forgotten, colourful birds. How beautiful to be in their lineage, the mystics, the criminals of conscience; where it is not the equivalence of blood that joins, it’s the equivalence of something else. My friend Ràjveer challenged my idea that for the song to travel, it must live in the bones. ‘If this were true,’ he said, ‘the music would die with people.’ He instead posited the spiritual and metaphysical as a carrier of these songs and stories. If the stirring of this music is afforded only to those who are in the regional lineage of its creators, how humanist is it – how truly transcendental is its love?

Whatever the answer, there’s something in the music that sends jolts of frenzy to my body today, with the faces of an uncanny, reassuring resonance. Jubilant colours can be, will be, worn again, and there’ll always be people of integrity in every generation.

This music should be lived in, then lived out.
Bone should connect to fingertip, blood to your tears.
What will I do with my hands?

Don’t blaspheme the words of poets with their echoes.
Don’t regard the listeners by the words they collected.
Analyse pisiform bones instead.
Observe the echoes of their veins.

The post To Which Homeland Should I Send My Letter? appeared first on English PEN.

I think it was because, when I was a child, I loved reading but always had a feeling that writers didn’t represent children as they really were. There were no real emotional worries: children were rounding up robbers in Enid Blyton; in school stories, girls were sometimes picked on, but the depiction just didn’t chime with me, even as I enjoyed reading the books. I liked Noel Streatfeild – my favourite book of hers was Ballet Shoes – and the sisters did quarrel, but it just wasn’t any kind of reflection on life. And I don’t just mean my sort of life because I was brought up in a council estate, but many people’s actual private lives. In fact, there’s a moment in one of my childhood diaries where I write in rather ponderous terms that I don’t want to write children’s books when I grow up, because they’re not truthful about children.

I actually really did want to write for children. And I was lucky that, by the time I started writing, things had shifted a little – there was suddenly room for stories like Tracy Beaker and children in care, or Andy in The Suitcase Kid, whose parents are splitting up. Very sadly, there seem to be more children in care now. And certainly many, many more children whose parents aren’t together anymore. Life has changed.

I don’t want to traumatise children, but I do want to be truthful. I want them to be comforted, and I want to have happy endings, and I want to have lots of funny bits to break any tension. I want any child going through a horrible time to feel that there’s somebody out there for them, that they’re not alone, that somebody understands what they’re going through. And, if a child is lucky enough to have a very secure family and lots of friends, for them to be able to empathise with other children who might seem a bit withdrawn or weird or angry.

It does give me great delight when, now, as I sign copies of Think Again,my book for adults, people have said quietly to me that my books had helped them and made a difference to their lives. Who wouldn’t feel pleased and touched that that’s happened?

Empathy really is so central to your books. You write with such compassion and sensitivity about your characters, and I know this has helped young readers to develop empathy towards others, and to cope with issues in their own lives that require the empathy of others.

Empathy is so often coded as a female trait, and so many of your readers are girls – though you of course have readers of all genders. I’m interested in your thoughts on this – on what constitutes empathy, and on its value in literature where empathy can be such a gendered notion?

I know it’s not fashionable to see differences between males and females, but in my experience, if you look at the primary school playground, girls are often going around arm in arm or whispering together, or suddenly turning against another girl, while boys fight or have a fierce argument and then it’s all over and done with, and is kind of more straightforward. I think girls often understand instinctively how somebody else might be feeling – but this is so generalised, because there are obviously many boys who do, and many girls who just want to go out and play football. I do feel that empathy often comes more naturally to women, perhaps because women have traditionally had to raise the children, and to try and think what another person is thinking, what it must be like for that person. That’s where I welcome the fact that so many youngish fathers are very much more in the picture now, wanting to empathise and help out and spend time with their young children.

I think most women would say that they’re almost fine-tuned into sensing when a child of theirs comes home and they’re a little withdrawn – they just know that something’s happened, that something’s gone wrong. But all I can really write about are my own experiences, and that’s the way it seems to me.

What do you think the responsibilities of children’s authors are, especially today, when, for example, online misogyny is on the rise, and children can so easily access this content through social media and the internet?

It’s a huge problem. It’s very difficult. I really don’t know how we get around it, because most children are wily about getting round any blocks on their phones and accessing the most horrible things. Although they’ve got all this knowledge, they’re also in a way more innocent too – they can think that because you see some horrible thing on the internet it must be true that women like to be hurt and humiliated in a sexual relationship. This is what’s so frightening.

There are very good male adult role models, of course. But there’s this sinister new movement about what it is to be a man, and you’ve got all these young boys who naturally want to get on with others and do what is considered right. But what is right, now? I do feel sorry for them. I just think it’s very hard to deal with.

Going back to what you said about writing in a truthful way, because your books deal with difficult topics in such honest and open ways, there’s often conversation around your books being ‘controversial’ or even ‘inappropriate’ for children. What’s your response when people (parents, for example) say they don’t allow children to read your books?

It’s their prerogative. If they don’t want children to read my books, that’s fine. I was in my local bookshop and there was a mum with her daughter and several other girls the daughter’s age, and they were looking at the children’s section. The bookseller is very loyal to me, and has a whole load of my books on that shelf, and one of the little girls said, ‘Oh, oh, Jacqueline Wilson, oh, can I have this one Mummy?’ and she said, ‘Certainly not!’ I fell about laughing in the background. It was very embarrassing.

I think adults often want to keep their children feeling that the world is safe and cozy – and why wouldn’t you? But I don’t think I’ve ever had a letter from a child or young adult saying they couldn’t bear a book. Once or twice, children have said a book made them cry, and I’ve said ‘I’m so sorry,’ but then one of them said, ‘But I like crying!’ It’s a tightrope, because I want to be truthful but I still want to be entertaining. I certainly don’t want my books to be banned.

Maybe adults going through a troubled time might, in retrospect, think that one of my books was too upsetting. But mostly I have had lovely positive reactions. There was a trend going round on social media , ‘Jacqueline Wilson traumatised me.’ But I think that was very tongue in cheek. Then there was a sort of counter-movement of ‘Jacqueline Wilson raised me.’ When Think Again came out and, in the initial weeks, there were t-shirts and tote bags with ‘Jacqueline Wilson raised me’ on them. I made my daughter put one on and photographed her, because she’s the only person who could legitimately say that!

I think that if anyone were to take the trouble to write to me and tell me exactly why they thought a certain book wasn’t suitable, I would read it very carefully and take it seriously. But I’ve never thought This was a huge mistake. It is difficult with books that I wrote, say, 30 years ago, because times have changed enormously. We’ve become much more sensitive about certain issues.

How much do you worry about book banning in general (which is of course a much bigger issue in America, where many children’s books are being banned from libraries and schools, often those which explore similar issues to those about which you write – like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume)? Do you fear this will only get worse?

I have very few books published in America – they have been banned, I think. It’s a problem. But I do think that, here, publishers do struggle so much. Books are much more carefully edited, copy edited, sent to different specialist organisations to make sure that no offense can be taken. I understand all of this. With me, if something has been pointed out to me that could possibly cause offence, I always think very carefully. Mostly, I accept suggestions or edit myself very carefully. Sometimes, as an old lady, I think really? And just occasionally I will say something has to stay the way it is, because it wouldn’t work in any other way. It is a difficult thing.

Do you think the reception of your books would have differed at all if they were primarily aimed at boys, and centred primarily around male characters?

It’s hard to know. Melvin Burgess wrote a book, Junk, about three teenage boys, which delves into their minds, and it was probably a very truthful book, but I’m pretty certain that it would not be on any shelves now – not at all for any sort of issue of literary quality, but because I think people would prefer not to think about what it’s like in a teenage boy’s mind.

If you look at the top ten children’s books, I would say the majority of them have male characters – from Harry Potter to Wimpy Kid and Tom Gates. Books for children also seem to have changed a bit: they are much shorter and much more heavily illustrated; they deal with issues, but in a comic sort of way. Part of the problem is that any book now comes second to looking at a phone. If I was a bookseller or children’s librarian, I would recommend Impossible Creatures by the wonderful Katherine Rundell, because I think she’s a brilliant writer, and because it’s both quite easy to read and deals with such interesting things, for boys as well as for girls.

I’d also like to ask about the relationship you have with your readers. Writer–reader solidarity is something that PEN has been supporting for over a hundred years, and it feels like your bond with your readers is particularly special.

When I was growing up, I adored you and all of your books. I even had a Jacqueline Wilson branded diary that I wrote in, which made it feel a bit like I was sharing my thoughts with you and your characters. I was lucky enough to meet you a few times at book signings, and each time I gave you a letter that I had written, and you always wrote back to me. Your replies are some of my most treasured possessions. What has it meant to you to receive letters from your fans and what does that exchange with your readers mean to you? How valuable is letter-writing today?

It’s so wonderful. I’ve got boxes and boxes of letters children have written to me up in the attic. Initially, I replied to all of them. But it became difficult because I was spending far more time writing letters than actually writing books. Now I can’t promise that I can write back to everybody, but for anybody who writes a really interesting, sincere letter, or who is going through a particularly hard time, I do try and do my best.

I was in John Lewis in Oxford Street recently, doing a signing in the new Waterstones bookshop in the store, and there were four people in the queue who had kept their childhood postcards from me. I’m amazed at the number of people who have kept them. It’s just so lovely to feel that people cared enough to put pen to paper (or crayon to paper!).

There are people I’ve written to almost as if they were nieces. These are very special to me. There’s a young woman in Ireland who wrote to me when she was very ill, when she was about twelve, and we are still communicating. And there’s another young woman I write to who lives outside Glasgow. I recently met up with her, which was lovely.

There’s a young man who I first wrote to when he was about seven. Now he’s 24 and has recently moved to London, and I think he is coming to visit soon – which will be a bit strange for both of us. But it’s lovely to feel that people have really liked my books. I’ve been sent so many photographs over the years of girls’ bedrooms with all my books, and it’s just so sweet.

That’s so heartwarming to hear. Finally, I wanted to ask about your experience of writing for adults in Think Again, compared to writing for children. What was it like revisiting your old teenage characters, now in their adult lives, and your younger readers, now grown into their own adult lives?

It’s surreal. It really is. Often at book signings it’s the mother who’s keener to have a photo than the child. I’ve got this sort of double kind of audience, which is so special.

It’s been in my mind for a long time to write about a few of the characters I wrote about in the past. I had a conversation with my daughter, in which we were playing about a bit and trying to think what might have happened to some of the characters. Other people have done that online, and there seemed to be some interest. Then, wonderfully, someone approached my agent and asked if I’d be interested, and I said ‘Yes please!’ The Girls series was one of the most popular, so I thought Let’s have a go.

You’re opening yourself up for criticism a bit, because everybody has expectations about what might have happened. I’ve had suggestions that are so remarkably funny and lurid and certainly not publishable.

When I was writing about teenage girls, I was endlessly going into schools, and often having to face Year Nine (who can be a bit scary at times). With the permission of the teachers, I could talk to the girls during break time, and ask them what was worrying them the most, who had a boyfriend, whether they were allowed to go out by themselves in little bunches? In Think Again, Ellie is 40; I am obviously way, way, way past 40. I do have some friends who are 40, but you can’t really ask them any really intimate questions, you would feel shy and peculiar and nosy, unless they’re your best friends. So I had to think quite hard about what it would be like for Ellie to be 40. I did have some diaries that I kept when I was that age, but I find it very cringey going back to my diaries, so I tried not to do that. Then, wonderfully, as soon as I started writing, somehow Ellie just came to me.

I found it much easier than I thought it would be. And I loved writing it, I really, really did. I always like writing, but it was something new. I wondered what it would be like going out to promote it, but I’ve never had such a lovely book tour. People were so kind and so appreciative, which is just the sort of boost you need when you think, Oh, I’m getting old; am I getting past it? 

A lot of older friends and family have said, ‘Why are you carrying on writing? You’ve made enough money to see you and your partner through and to leave to your daughter; you’ve got a lovely house, and you’ve got lovely books, everything that you would want; why keep on writing, because it must tire you out writing a lot at home and then going out and promoting it?’ One particular friend said to me, very genuinely, ‘I think you should take up doing jigsaws.’ I thought You have no idea what pleasure (and also what anxiety) writing gives me – and it’s not going to happen with jigsaws! I think I just am a writer, and I have to carry on writing while words make sense.

The post I Don’t Want to Traumatise Children, but I Do Want to Be Truthful: A Conversation with Jacqueline Wilson appeared first on English PEN.

Look, I’ve got a little bottle of champagne and a packet of biscuits from Polish Airlines. Nothing has changed since last year. Springtime London is the same – alternately sunny and overcast. The grey carpeting on the floor is the same, so are the four doors leading to hotel rooms and the fifth leading to the stairwell. One door is marked with my name, as it was then, but there is a different name next to yours. I took it down straight away and could sense you winking conspiratorially at these shenanigans. Champagne usually makes me tipsy rather quickly; this time its bubbles go straight to my head, relieving the stress of the long journey and this return to a place where everything looks exactly the same and where nothing will ever be the same.

You pour champagne into the glasses that were standing by the mirror in the bathroom, where I would have put my toothpaste and brush. You were unpacking, toothbrush and toiletries still deep in your bags, when I arrived. You’d just begun hanging up the dresses you brought. ‘They’re all black or navy,’ I remark, ‘of course.’ You once told me that at some point you decided to wear only black or dark clothes until the war ends. ‘But I’m not completely hopeless,’ you reply in your typical manner while reaching into the closet for a white spring shawl. Hanging among the long, dark dresses, it bears an uncanny resemblance to your long blond hair, which always stands out against your clothes. ‘Yeah, sure, that white shawl will change everything,’ I tease. To prove me wrong, you take off your black travel clothes so that you can model a new dress with the white shawl. Watching you from behind, I observe your milky white body, with pronounced ribs and shoulder blades, in black lace underwear, noting the sharp contrast with your light hair and untanned skin. ‘You know, my friend was in an accident once,’ you begin, fastening little buttons all the way up to your chin. ‘When I got to the hospital, she was lying unconscious and I saw her on the stretcher in a black bra and red panties. It suddenly hit me: you never know what will happen to you – or when – and what somebody might think when they see you unconscious in intensive care. So now, as a matter of principle, I always wear matching underwear.’ I admire your white shawl and take a video of you twirling around and stealing glances at the large mirror on the wall.

‘Look, it’s my first smile line,’ I say as we stare at our faces reflected in the mirror. You assure me there is nothing to be seen. Since last year it’s grown more pronounced. I study it every morning and contemplate how my skin will acquire new wrinkles and folds while yours will remain eternally milky and flawless, just like in those photos published by the international media on the day when everything happened. Though, in all honesty, you were never terribly concerned with such ‘girly’ things.

Remember that time when I wrote to you – in a different city, in a different life – saying that I desperately needed a pick-me-up, and we went to check out a clothing store I had discovered that morning on Instagram? I grabbed a heap of blouses, skirts and trousers for the fitting room, and you sat down on a nearby chair, saying your job was to appreciate and document the fashion show. Twirling before the mirror and your gaze, I realise that I already have plenty of clothes, but it’s so nice to be here together, trying on every possible thing. I’ll buy one more white blouse that I don’t really need, but right now I look fabulous and it will remind me of our day. This is an important feminine ritual: picking out and trying on different versions of ourselves. We may ultimately end up with yet another black dress or white blouse, but what matters in this moment is believing that you are taking a decisive step toward discovering a new you. As I went off to pay for the new version of me-in-a-white-blouse, you returned to the clothes racks and then came to the till with two black dresses and a long, orange lacquered skirt. ‘Don’t think that I’m completely hopeless,’ you said, as usual, and promised to wear it on some particularly special occasion. I never did see you wearing it, but that’s beside the point: you were always ready for change, even without a trip to the fitting room.

By this point we’ve each had two glasses of champagne and put on my red MAC lipstick. I need to unpack and get some sleep after two days on the road, and you have a date with your husband – it’s your first time in London together. But here I am sitting on the floor of your room, drinking champagne and nibbling dry biscuits, thinking about this habit of ours – sitting huddled together on the floor, whispering and giggling between sips of alcohol, our bodies emitting sparks. It goes back to the beginning of the full-scale invasion, when we would spend days and evenings in the corridor, sitting on our sleeping bags, waiting for the air-raid alarm to end, sharing a bottle that you had stashed away somewhere. We like sitting on the floor because it provides support; if it’s behind two thick walls, then we even feel safe. Red lipstick is a must: it reminds us that we are alive, you used to say. You reach out to hug me and then slip out the door – adorned in your white shawl and red lipstick – and head down the stairs.

The next morning I knock on your door and announce that today is Easter and that we should go to church. Dressed in a short black T-shirt, you look dishevelled. But I know you weren’t sleeping. You were writing, going through your notes and documents until late, and then you couldn’t get to sleep; in the morning, back to work. You say you’re not the church-going type and urge me to go without you, but I insist that I need to spend this holiday with people – that’s just how I was raised. And we shouldn’t dally in getting to church; today we should rise early, overcoming the desire to stay in bed, as our small sacrifice. ‘I could do with a bit less sacrifice,’ you say, ‘but that won’t happen in our generation.’ And you head off to shower and iron one of your black dresses. We haven’t baked traditional paska or made brightly coloured Easter eggs, but I did dash out to the 24-hour supermarket last night to buy a big muffin to serve as our Easter bread.

There’s a Catholic church nearby, with very few people at the morning mass, and I miss the jubilant refrain of the traditional hymn: ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death!’ Still, I try to recreate the mandatory Easter morning joy. The spring sunlight pours into the nave with its high vaulted ceiling and organ music floods each of my cells, uniting me with the others here. You and I came here together and I’m holding a muffin that’s already crumbling and bears no resemblance to a traditional paska, but I’m glad that it’s performing this important role today. You remind me in a whisper that church is not your thing and suggest we finally go find some coffee. From high above, near the source of the organ music, the priest concludes the service with ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’ and then asks everyone to join in praying for those countries currently experiencing war or conflict. He begins reading their names – some are familiar, others that aren’t yet – and suddenly you grab my hand. I get it: we both fear that he will not utter the name of our country, this bird whose left leg is in peril; that he will forget it while trying not to stumble over all those other places in his list that are also rife with pain and death. We fear he will not notice us – two Ukrainian women who came to a Catholic church on Orthodox Easter for a morsel of hope, as crumbly as a muffin from the supermarket. When the voice from above finally says, ‘And especially please pray for people in Ukraine,’ we can’t hold back our tears. We are moved by how right, how just it is that even God on high, along with the priest and the organ, and grieving Mary, and Jesus who rose from the dead, all still remember us today.

‘What are you going to do after the war ends?’ I’ve managed to tear you away from your work again and entice you into another transgression. We are going to stroll around Hyde Park, soaking up the first sun of the season like ordinary people on an ordinary Sunday in April. We’ve brought chardonnay from the hotel fridge, secured in London Library tumbler cups, and we buy cheap sushi from a kiosk and go to watch the stately, domesticated swans float leisurely towards the shore. A moment later they turn back, scared off by the boisterous dogs and children enjoying their first outing of the year unencumbered by puffy snowsuits. There’s a chill coming from the water, so we wrap ourselves in one big cashmere shawl. This pretty picture with swans, dogs, and kids – especially the kids – stirs up a feeling that is always close at hand: the sense of two parallel realities that never meet. And as we stare into the pool, sunlight glinting off the cold water, I ask, ‘What are you going to do after the war ends?’ I don’t have to explain this abrupt shift from enjoying our sushi and the kids and the swans. You say, ‘I don’t know.’ You used to know – at the beginning. You were sure the end was near, and that everything would return to the way it was before. All the things you loved. All the things that mattered. Like taking your son for a walk around the lake to see the swans. But as the distance between ‘before’ and ‘after’ keeps growing – and the connection between them grows more tenuous – you can hardly remember what it was like before, you’ve lost touch with it; after all, you’ve lost so much. ‘Now I think,’ you start, ‘that we will be this way forever – cracked and crumbling. I can’t imagine future celebrations. I see us crying and hugging each other tightly – whoever of us is still here. And I see us working to preserve our memories, so that we don’t forget what happened, and learning to see past the holes in our buildings and ourselves, like the ones in the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum that we passed today.’

On our way out of the park, I take you to a sculpture of a swan. Its base is surrounded by steel plaques that people have engraved with the names of their deceased loved ones and some final words or wishes. Most of them speak of everlasting love or seek forgiveness or name the heartbroken family members or express gratitude for ‘being by my side through sunshine and rain’. You say this is a wonderful tradition and urge me to take note of it: ‘We will need lots of ideas and spaces to commemorate every name.’

‘When I was a child,’ I say, after hearing your thoughts about life after the war is over, ‘I dreamt of having a special flying carpet that could hold everyone that I love. As long as they were on that flying carpet, nothing could ever happen to them. No burning sun or devastating floods. No war, no death. You know, I still think about this flying carpet and all the people I want it to carry, who will live forever. For ever and ever. Amen.’

On our last day in London, I leave before you. I know that you stayed up late again, working, but that you took something to help you fall asleep. The walls between our hotel rooms are thin, and I try not to make any loud noises that might wake you. Checking the fridge, I find one small bottle of champagne and half of our Easter muffin. I leave them beside your door on the way to the lift and slip a note into the name holder: ‘Love & hugs, sweet Bird’.

I’ve just put a note with the same message next to your closed door. The champagne has washed over me, leaving glimmers of warmth and sorrow. I shake off the tears and biscuit crumbs, which cling like grains of sand to my fingers and red lips.

London, January 2024.

The post After the War Ends appeared first on English PEN.

Beth Pickens made her way to me through my computer screen on an end-of-summer afternoon – the kind where the sun is becoming italicised in the sky and you notice that the days are getting shorter again. I was attending a weekly series of writing workshops run by Sophie Robinson, and this week’s was about death and writing.

Pickens, an art advisor based in the USA, talked about how she helped artists through periods of creative block that often stemmed from fears common to all writers, one of which is death.

I was always acutely aware that I avoided setting pen to paper when it came to big ideas. Some sort of deep insecurity about the possible outcomes of my art becoming real. I say ‘acutely’, because, as we often do, I put a firmly sealed lid on these fears, never to be heard from again.

We were given a list of seven common fears surrounding death and asked to note down which resonated with us the most. I jotted them down on a notebook page whose margins brimmed with hand-drawn flowers and semi-realistic eyes:

1. I’m afraid to die because all my ambitions, my plans, my projects would come to an end.
2. I’m afraid to die because I would no longer be able to have any experiences.

I’m afraid to die because I would no longer be able to have any experiences.

Yikes. Not something I wanted to continue thinking about. Thanks, Beth, but I’d rather continue to procrastinate starting or finishing any of my projects. The lid went back on.

A year and half later, I’d quit my job and started an MA in directing. Work had made me stagnant; I barely had the energy to write, arriving home from two-hour commutes on cramped, narrow trains and falling asleep almost immediately. This was going to be my opportunity to spark that inner creative electricity again, taking those previous writing projects a step further by turning them into films.

My months studying culminated in a film about my family history, exploring themes of migration and identity. As a writer, I’m used to working solo on creative projects. In film, the process is entirely different.

Initially, I was bubbling with ideas. My Pinterest board and notebooks swarmed with images: Narcissister’s colourful and cluttered sculpture of her dead mother’s belongings, David Syke Tatler’s bright and playfully accessorised sock puppets, Edith Di Monda’s cool and mysterious house hats. Trying to bring my ideas to life, I got to work on making a replica of Young & Marten, an old hardware store that used to stand in Stratford. Primary colour paints, cardboard, and some string. My partner would sit at my desk, trying to concentrate on her big nine-to-five responsibilities, whilst I would keep interrupting from the floor to ask if she thought the cardboard building fit well around my face.

Once I began painting, the fun began to disappear.  Splendid yellows and grumpy blues gradually turned my prop into a block of cartoon cheese. What had been a solid and coherent idea in my mind turned into something confused, unsure of itself. I didn’t have any time to fix it.

To my surprise, showcasing the pre-vis went fairly well. The audience giggled at my blue and white polka-dot sock puppet; its brown wool hair crazy like mine. They responded well to the stories told by my parents about their childhoods and where we’d all come from. It should have filled me with confidence and pride, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was off. The bubbling ideas were boiling over the brim and dissipating.

When I was 15, my nanny passed away from cancer. She’d had it twice before, once before I was born and once when I was 14. The third time it was terminal. My father remembers her as a strong woman who had endured hardship, not only surviving it but living on to become what I remember of her. Encouraging me to have as much sugar as possible at breakfast time; playing cards with her and her friends, gambling in gummy packets; wearing the ponchos, hats and scarves she knitted for me in the biting English winters.

I’m now down to only one living grandparent; both of my mums’ parents had died before I was born. The three losses began to feel more significant as I grew older: I’d lost the opportunity to find out more about my great and great-great grandparents, about these particular paths of my ancestry. My grandmother was from Chakwal and my grandfather was from Amritsar. We don’t know how they met, what their lives were like before they came to England, or the choices made by our ancestors that  led to the existences of my cousins and I, all born and raised in London.

1. I’m afraid to create because all my ambitions, my plans, and my projects will come to an end when I die.
2. I’m afraid to create because I will no longer be able to have any experiences when I die.
3. I’m afraid to create because everything before me that has died lives in me now, and I must do it justice.

The lid had come off, the stifling anxiety overboiling. Spilled, it was undeniable. I had to do something to lift this fear of death and legacy.

In a weeks’ time, I would be visiting my remaining grandparent in the mountains of Galicia, so I decided to take off with my camera and work out the rest once there.

For the first few days, I ran around frantically, camera at my hip, trying to find a way to shift my fear. I searched in the tops of trees, among marsh green leaves changing into terracotta red. I searched in knee-deep bushes growing smaller strawberries and rounder plums than you get in supermarkets back home. I focused my ears, trying to discern the sound of strolling breezes from lolling sea foam in the distance. In the end, I gave in.

‘I’ve got a migraine,’ I told abuelo. He abandoned planting avocado seeds and sent me to my room with old packets of paracetamol. I climbed into bed, the room unnaturally dark for an early afternoon in the summer. My fingers reached out to the bedside table, reflexively searching. They only found a glass of water.

After the migraine had subsided, I texted my partner about how I was feeling. I’d been trying to film constantly since I’d arrived, hoping each day that something would click and the whole film would be done, just as I had envisioned on the plane over. Her response came: ‘I hate that what started out as a project you were really passionate about and loved has become tainted by others’ opinions.’

This, so simple in its care, was kaleidoscopic. I could see, between the haunting shapes and lurid colours, that I was devastated to face the truth of what had ruined this film for me: I was so worried about doing my imaginary ancestors proud, and creating something my imaginary offspring could connect with, something I had never had, that I was struggling to ground my project in the present; I was only ever looking to the looming deaths of my past and future, and the thoughts of people who did not exist in this exact life, in this exact moment.

The next morning, I used everything in my power to stay present, to follow my gut. I found joy and humour and playfulness in my piece that I’d failed to see – or understand – before. In the editing process, I worked hard at experimenting with my resources, again staying present in my choices, following these instincts with which I was becoming more in tune. I found pride and determination and satisfaction. My artist’s gut is still in its infancy. I still find myself fearing death, and the pressure of artistic legacy. Pickens, in Make Your Art No Matter What, talks about creating a death acceptance practice in which you find small ways to accept death every day. By following my instincts, I am staying only in the present, accepting and co-existing with the presence of death of the future and the past. In doing so, I find life and creativity and success.

The post Past and Future Death and Art appeared first on English PEN.

All Will Know

Strolling down the souq in al-Nuseirat, witnessing the destruction of homes and markets, I bump into our building’s guard. We engage in chitchat about the ongoing atrocities. He shares the heart-wrenching news that my home and my brother’s have been bombarded. I say, ‘No problem. Money will come again. What really matters is souls.’Material harm, rather than a dear one, as the Palestinian proverb goes in such times of destruction. ‘How are you and yours?’ I ask.

‘I’m still alive, and my wife and children are still with me,’ he says. ‘But the rest of my family has been martyred. My siblings and uncles are all gone. Our building was bombed. They exterminated us.’ His eyes are red.

I console him, ashamed. I share that my niece’s son, along with my cousins’ children, are all martyrs, and that the fate of my niece’s second son – he was kidnapped by the occupying forces – is unclear.

He consoles me, pats my hand, and so I do the same, turning martyrs over in our fingers.

‘Where are you staying now?’ he asks.

‘Here in az-Zawayda. Near the historical site. You?’

‘I took shelter in a storehouse. The people there welcomed me in – may Allah compensate them.’ His voice wobbles.

‘How do you buy what you need?’

My question seems to strike him. ‘I sold my phone for 500 shekels,’ he says. ‘And I’m spending them.’  I see the overburdened pride in him. ‘I need to feed my kids. I sold my phone – so what? Why should I keep it? Who would I call? My family’s all gone. I don’t want any more news. And if I became a martyr, everyone would know anyway.’

Muhie/Mukhie

Today, Muhie is sick. A ten-person family was displaced along with us and Muhie is their three-year-old son. He’s in the very first stages of soaking up Arabic, pronouncing ‘ha’ as ‘kha’, ‘sa’ as ‘tha’. Arabic weeps when he speaks. We call him Mukhie the Israeli because the way he pronounces Arabic is like a settler learning it for the first time. Ironically, Mukhie is fair skinned with blue eyes and blond hair. If Israeli soldiers saw him or heard him, they’d think him a hostage.

Normally, Mukhie wakes up, greeting everyone with a cheerful ‘Mornin awl’, and then moves towards me, gives me a ‘Mornin’ too, and asks if there is water, and Arabic weeps.

‘Morning, Mukhie!’ I say, smiling. ‘All the water is for you.’

He has become the soul of the camp. He helps us chop and collect the logs. He plays with the children of the village, acts as their leader. Everyone surrounds him. But at the same time they somehow steer clear.

Muhie’s father is frightened for his children. He tries to shield their eyes from the panic and the fear. ‘When you see a tank, I’ll let you drive it,’ he had once promised Muhie. And then Muhie had admonished his father: ‘We saw tanks and soldiers but you didn’t let me drive. You said “Not now”. I don’t like people lying to me’.

Except it didn’t sound like this. Every word was mispronounced. Arabic wept. If I wrote it how he said it, you wouldn’t understand. But this is Muhie, and this is how he speaks. And the sixty of us on the farm have learned and adopted it.

I ask Muhie’s father about his promise. ‘I don’t want him to be traumatised by the tanks and soldiers,’ he says. ‘So I told him, “I’ll let you drive it unless you give me trouble,” so that he’ll think of the tank as nothing more than a car. Only when he grows up will he understand that it’s the car of the dead.’

But as I say, today, Muhie is sick, grappling with a stomach bug because of contaminated water. He coughs as if a tank is marching over his chest. His lungs are inflamed from the dust of the ongoing shelling. This is a child who thinks life is just a toy: he holds it, turns it over, loosens and tightens its screws, pulls at its rope, all so that he can understand its structure. The crucial point remains: death isn’t a core part of his life.

The Tale of Two Cancers

‘A cup of coffee and some water, please. After that, I’ll tell you everything.’ He is Abou Ali, a 55-year-old man. He is new to the farm. He lost his wife and their only child after the occupation forces bombarded the house that had sheltered them for 40 days. They had been martyred shortly after he was displaced.

Abou Ali had refused to leave Gaza. He had promised not to repeat his father’s mistake, not to carry the stories of a third and a fourth migration on his back. So he had decided to stay in Gaza, to witness the occupation’s violence. We don’t like to hear about it, but we must, because collective memory is built on shared scenes, the accumulated narratives of the farmer and the land.

‘As I prepare to go to bed,’ Abou Ali says, ‘I pray three prayers: the Isha Prayer, the Absentee Funeral Prayer for the martyrs, and the Night Vigil Prayer. Then I lie on my bed, and before sleep creeps over my eyelids I place my ID in my shirt pocket and a piece of paper with my full name in my trouser pocket. Just in case. If my house is bombed with me inside, and I’m torn to pieces, my name might then be found in my hand or foot. That one night, as death surrounded us, I took my pen and wrote my name on my hands, my feet, my chest. I felt like a narcissist.’

That night, Abou Ali’s house was bombed. When the window fell onto him, thick pieces of concrete came with it and formed a pyramid over his body. And when the ceiling fell, that pyramid shielded him. ‘I don’t know how I survived. What I did know was that I could no longer stay at home. I headed to al-Rantisi Hospital, where they care for children with cancer. It’s become a refuge for children and families escaping two cancers: disease and occupation.’

He continues. ‘When they controlled the area around al-Karama Street, and they set out from the  roundabout that separates al-Karama Street from al-Nasr Street, and the quadcopters fired on every passer-by – that night, I don’t know how I fell asleep. When I woke, it wasn’t to Fairouz’s voice, but the tank’s muzzle hailing me at the window under which I slept. And at that moment, I realised that cancer had spread through the body of the city.’

He continues. ‘They ordered us to hold our IDs in our right hands and raise white flags in our left and exit the hospital one by one. They then directed us to walk in a straight line from al-Nasr toward al-Galaa Street until we reached the checkpoint on Salah al-Din Street, where we could pass to a safe area. I didn’t comply. I veered off from al-Galaa Street toward al-Rimal to reach Shifa Hospital. As I was walking, I saw corpses thrown to the ground – men, women, children, teens. Some had been hit by sniper fire, more than once. Some had been shelled, more than once.’

He continues. ‘Here is a hand and a head. There a foot and a toe. This is a shoulder. I didn’t know who had leaned against it. But it was lying in a long street today, no one to carry it. This street was a tomb with neither tombstones nor sand. Just corpses. Even the undertaker’s corpse was lying on that street.’ He continues.

The Story Isn’t a Story, Nor the Hero a Hero

I understand. I understand that we have grown accustomed to stories with happy endings, or at the very least with a hero. Even stories with sad endings have heroes. But here? Nothingness. The story isn’t a story. The hero is not a hero. Nor is Gaza that Gaza that I know, the Gaza I used to tell others about.

Once, in Ramallah, a friend had asked me, ‘Ahmad, tell me about Gaza. What colours is it? How does it smell?’

‘Gaza is shelter for me and all Gazans,’ I had said. ‘The sea is ours; the streets are for us. When I walk in Gaza, I put my hands in my pockets. I know the streets. I never fear getting lost. I never expect an attack from a stranger. I stroll through Gaza in peace, as though I were in my own bedroom. I have wandered the streets of Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, Doha and Ramallah with my hands in the air and nothing in my pockets except for my phone. My hands were ready for strangers. In all my life, in all my places, I have never felt secure anywhere except in Gaza.’

Today, a year and a half after that answer, I now say, ‘You might read, Ghadeer, that all the world is safer than Gaza. Today, my hands are in the air, crossed like Christ. Today, my pocket is a graveyard. When I put my hand into it, my fingers embrace a martyr. Today, the stranger is here. The attack is a silent cancer. Today, I’m fed up with counting genocide days, and the tomb is full.’ shoulder their boats: poets reciting their poetry standing up, writers ached and hunching over their desks, the many named and nameless who carry the suffering of the world on their shoulders to the shores of the sea.

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I still remember the first poem I wrote and performed outside of a school setting. It was at a Saturday morning poetry session at Leeds Playhouse, then called West Yorkshire Playhouse. Michelle Scally Clarke, a well-known local poet, was the lead artist. I remember not having much exposure to poetry, besides that which came regurgitated in sonnets and haikus. The session released me from the constraints of form and structure; I free-wrote. Michelle encouraged us to dig deep, to tap into weighty emotion and to let it all out on what she called her best friend ‘Tracy Paper’. I’ve not looked back since.

I love writing and have always loved writing. I owe a lot of that to my English teachers and to my Dad, who constantly took me to open mic events, read poetry to me as a child and always found the time to read over my work. But my love for it doesn’t stop me being acutely aware that I have a kind of insuppressible urge to write. Especially when I’m hurting. I suppose it’s my therapy.

Add it to the list of other tragic things I must somehow turn to art to make somewhat bearable.

– ‘How can I write about the weather?’ by Simone Yasmin, commissioned by Metal Culture for In Other Words (2022)

I write a lot about race, about womanhood – Black womanhood, specifically – with misogynoir and intersectional feminism tightly bound to this. I write about social issues: poverty, the climate crisis, human rights violations, the things in between. Taking inspiration from the things happening around me means the themes of my work can be limitless. Despite this, I often find the work I return to – the work that feels most cathartic – is written from my own lived experiences.

I used to say I felt most content when creating. I didn’t mean that in a sunshine-and-rainbows way, but instead that writing releases all the pent-up emotion and places it somewhere more manageable, somewhere more digestible. The link between the personal and the emotion it carries is quite a funny line to flirt with. ‘Funny’ is maybe not the right word – maybe interesting. I’ve always said my goal as a poet is to make people feel. You want the audience to feel the words you’re saying and all the charged emotions behind them. But how do you deliver that emotion without succumbing to it yourself?

Sometimes I write poems so deeply personal that re-reading my work is akin to reliving the experience. I’ve sat in the mirror countless times reading and re-reading my poems until I can strike the balance: just enough emotion for the audience, just enough emotion for me, and, even then, it can all still unravel on stage. I guess you have to detach a little from some of the moments in your writing to be able to perform them – just a little though. If you were touched, moved, hurt enough to pen the piece, I’m not sure the trauma of it stays locked in the fibres of the page on which you first penned it. In fact, I’m sure it doesn’t.

As cathartic as the writing process is, you reopen the wound when saying the words aloud to an audience. It’s impossible not to. And it’s the same with relaying most trauma. The pain doesn’t stop just because you’ve let it breathe; each time you retell it, it takes a little bit of you with it. For me, the self often determines the work. The emotions and experiences I’m wading through tend to manifest on the page. Some of the most personal pieces I’ve written relay my experiences of racism, sexual violence, and misogynoir. They were always the poems that got stuck in my throat on stage. I started to get comfortable with some. Others I stopped performing altogether.

Last year, when I lost my granny and then, very suddenly, my uncle, that all shifted. I began to write about thick and heavy grief. I’m struggling to write about anything else. I’ve only performed one poem from this new work; when I did, I had to grip a chair next to me to stop my legs from giving way. I let the tears fall once I made it back to my seat. I felt sick for an hour after.

I suppose approval has become synonymous with applause. Once you say ‘thank you’ you want the applause to flood the room. Maybe you expect it to erupt and ricochet in echoes. As a performance poet – or a performer of any kind – you want to come off stage and hear praise. You might even hang around backstage to see if anyone shouts for an encore. You try not to look too keen. You want that dopamine hit. You need that buzz. But when you’re performing the personal – when you’ve just broken down, stripped off, stood naked on stage, allowing the audience to feast on your most intimate moments – maybe the response you once wanted is no longer the same.

Maybe the applause becomes muffled and audience faces blur.

Maybe ‘that was amazing’ starts to double back on you as you find yourself reliving a moment that was far from amazing.

Maybe you feel jealousy as people tell you ‘your imagery was so vivid’ and you wish you could have formed imagery from metaphors and similes, not from the events burned on the insides of your skull.

Maybe when they tell you ‘I loved that’ you want to scream because you didn’t.

As audiences, we often want to feel things outside ourselves, or through the feelings of people outside ourselves. To get close to it but not too close. I guess poets, performers, writers, and artists are often not given that grace. We lay it all out and audiences relish in our pain, rarely pausing between the applause to ask if we’re okay.

One evening, listening to the audiobook of Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface as I stood making my dinner, I heard the lines ‘Only she never cared that once the art was made, once the personal became spectacle, the pain was still there.’ Putting the personal out there in poems, paintings, memoirs, whatever medium doesn’t rid the creator of the pain. It still remains past the claps, the clicks, the pats on the back. That’s not to say those brave enough to get up on stage and share some of those personal moments with an audience don’t deserve the praise. They absolutely do – us poets love the clicks. Maybe as audiences we just need to think more about balancing praise with care. Especially when we can see the performer is hurting.

I often reflect with one of my writer-friends on how we met. It was about five years ago and I was watching her perform for the first- time. Mid-poem, she fled from the stage with tears streaming down her face and apologised to the audience. I followed her instinctively to the bathroom, moved by the poem she’d been unable to finish. We hugged, cried, laughed. She opened up to me about her experiences, about how tough it was to share that particular piece in the spotlight. I listened. I didn’t tell her how beautiful the poem was, or that I wanted to hear the rest of it. I didn’t speak about the imagery she’d woven through, or how I loved her use of different languages. She needed the space to talk about the experience, not to celebrate the form in which we’d received it.

I know quite a few writers who craft truly powerful and personal poetry but refuse to perform it. Digging into feelings again isn’t easy. It takes a lot to heal, and sometimes you have to question for whose benefit you’re unearthing it all. Who does it serve? When a performer is brave enough to give you even a fraction of insight into the personal, hold that, hold them. They could have left it on the page.

I want to leave you with an extract from a poem I wrote in 2019. I’d just shared an extremely personal piece on stage, one that I’ve not performed since. This poem made its way out of me soon afterwards:

And the audience clicks clicks clicks.
‘You’ve got this,’ they say,
offering words of comfort.
Clicking while they encourage you,
not trying to discourage you
eyes pleading you to carry on.
They think you’ve lost your place in your poem,
confused your lines,
but you’re lost in the moment,
confusing flashbacks with reality,
tripping over trauma,
until you’re back,
there,
again.

– ‘Healing and feeling’ by Simone Yasmin, unpublished but alive and well in the Notes app of her phone.

Simone Yasmin is a writer and spoken word artist born and based in Leeds. Her poetry has been published in Metal’s ‘In Other Words 2’, BALTIC’S ‘S.P.A.M Spreads #1’, ‘Exiled Writers Ink’s ‘RESISTANCE’ and Unicef Next Generation’s ‘Words By’. She is a former judge on the panel of the Leeds Poetry Festival competition and Simone recently worked with the National Literacy Trust to select West Yorkshire’s first young Poet Laureate’s. She is currently writing her debut collection of poetry.

Photo credit: Michael Godsall

The post Relishing In My Pain appeared first on English PEN.

LILIANA COROBCA: Before this novel, I wrote another – A Year in Paradise – in which Sonia, the main character, has not yet turned 17. She has failed university admission and ends up in the clutches of a trafficker who takes her to a brothel in a war zone on the edge of the world. It explored an aspect of migration in the post-Soviet space, perhaps the most cruel and unfair aspect: human trafficking. In Kinderland, the girl is younger, and it was easy for me to adopt her voice. In fact, the novel was initially an epistolary one, in which the mother’s voice was as strong as the children’s. The kids told their mother what was happening at home and the mother told them what she was doing in Italy. But, as I wrote, the mother drifted away, until I couldn’t feel her anymore. I didn’t feel the need to step into her skin. She became an episodic character; when she appears, it’s through the eyes and voices of the children.

I was hesitant when I started writing the book (it was published in Romanian 10 years ago), because I felt I couldn’t write about children if I didn’t have them around, couldn’t see them by my side, observe their reactions, understand them by always watching them. Then I said to myself: let’s take a risk. For the elder children, Cristina and Dan, I used my relationship with my brother – who is seven years younger than me, the same age gap as in the book; the third child, who moved me when he appeared between the lines, was my imaginary one, my fictional little boy.

MONICA CURE: When I began reading Kinderland, Cristina’s voice immediately seemed familiar to me. A similar situation exists in Romania as in Moldova – especially among children in rural areas. Even when parents don’t leave the country to find work, they often have long commutes to the city, and so children spend much of their time in the company of grandparents or other children. I’ve spoken with children who have even picked up certain mannerisms or ways of speaking from elderly people. Having so much freedom – if that’s what we want to call it – makes these children seem to be ‘in the know’ about what is happening around them. But it’s also because they have to be.

WF: One of Kinderland’s great virtues is its modulation between severity and play (and in finding the playful in the severe, the severe in the playful). Liliana – could you talk a little about that modulation? And Monica – could you talk about severity and play in your act of translation?

MC: I think that’s a great observation. For me, the scene that best embodies this is when the youngest brother, Marcel, uses his father’s coat to pretend he’s there – even if not in a positive way. The siblings have played dress up in their parents’ clothes before, but this time it’s more poignant. We as readers experience that modulation intensely, but the narrator seems to experience most of it in the same way. That heightens the contrast. In my translation, I wanted to convey that overall consistency of the narrator’s tone.

LC: To be alone and abandoned in a village is a tragedy. But I tried to accept the children’s perspective: on the one hand, I think that any victim tries to tame reality, to adapt by looking for solutions; on the other, children are always playing – they grow up playing. The tone of the book is a very pure, very innocent one. I remember that I had just finished some projects on censorship – hard and dry – the year I was writing it, and I was seeking to balance my concerns; as dark and hopeless as the anthology of documents on communist censorship was, the story of the abandoned children was bright and tender. I felt that I had to invent some sunny events, so that I could continue the sad story and so that the reader could move forward, too. I wasn’t a detached, cold author: I got involved and looked for a balance and a solution. We can’t survive without a bit of humour, especially in contexts like the novel’s, a borderline situation to which thousands of people – children – are subject today.

WF: Monica – when your translation of Liliana’s The Censor’s Notebook won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, much was made of it being your debut. Your second book-length translation is of Liliana’s words, too. I’d like to ask about your translatorial voice, and how you think, at the moment, it relates to Liliana’s authorial voice.

MC: I feel incredibly fortunate to have got to work on Kinderland after The Censor’s Notebook. Part of what I love about Liliana’s writing is the range, the varied (and important) topics she feels compelled to illuminate in her works. Though the voices of Liliana’s narrators are very different – a 12-year-old girl and a middle-aged communist censor – the sense of humour has something similar in it. I like that Kinderland was a new challenge, but  that it also allowed me to build a kind of continuity of voice for Liliana’s works in English.

WF: Liliana – many of the Kinderland’s scenes start with words like ‘sometimes’, or ‘one time’, or ‘one summer’. These phrases reveal something about the horizons of time in the book – as though it is progressing, yes, but progressing to nowhere in particular; as though a given scene is repeated and repeatable. The physical plot on which the book takes place is circumscribed, too. This is of course about the bounded space and time of childhood, but it felt to me as though it was also about more than that. Could you talk about these ideas a little? And, perhaps relatedly, about what you think drives this story forward.

LC: The idea for the novel came from the story of a traumatised boy I met when visiting my home village in Moldova. His parents both worked abroad, returning for only a month in the summer. He had come to our home with his father, who left the child in the guest house. The child was so afraid that his beloved father would forget him at his strange house that he just looked straight at him, staring, hoping that his father would see him and not forget that he exists. The boy didn’t talk, didn’t play. This is where I started – although that little boy isn’t a character in the novel. My parents were teachers and they told me all kinds of stories about such children. The situation – children left at home, alone, without parents – is a real one. I realised it is was a generalised phenomenon and I wondered what our world would be like tomorrow, wondered if the family institution had changed. In my village, every family has a member who has left for money, at least one migrant. I realised that the most important event in the lives of these children is the arrival of their parents.

‘Waiting’ is the word around which the entire action of the novel revolves. It is the impulse that drives the scenes in the book forwards. The youngest child puts a chair at the gate and waits. They must do so for more than half a year. Children live with the memory of the moments in which they were normal children with parents. I was interested in how they children survive, and how they become dignified people.

WF: ‘A village all our own must exist somewhere, one with its own laws, with a way of life that’s inaccessible and hidden to others. Where life carries on beautifully, generously, compassionately, without meanness, longing, and waiting. A village of good children.’ These lines open a passage quite late in the book; when I reached them, they gave shape to a question I’d been dancing around. Secrets are so important to this book – to life, and to a child’s life, and to a community of children in a particular socio-political context. Could you both talk to me about the power – good and bad – of secrets? You’re very welcome to tell me a secret from your childhood, too, if you’d like…

LC: Maybe it’s not really a secret, because it’s in the book. I describe a scene that seems to belong to the domain of the fantastic – the meeting with the wild boar in the forest – but which is real: in 2010, when I had a scholarship in Stuttgart, I crossed paths with a wild boar in the forest of Akademie Schloss Solitude one evening. I don’t like secrets, really. But mysteries, yes. I believe that children need mysterious, magical experiences; spiritual power, imagination, little ‘secrets’ help these children. And this, although it might not seem like it, is very much related to my very atheistic childhood. We weren’t allowed to go to church, talk about God, read the Bible (a function of a childhood spent in the communist regime), and so we felt the need to invent something unseen, something great. Let’s live in pagan stories, invent our own religion. The power of secrets is a theme as huge as a novel; for the children of Kindereland, it is the power of hope, of patience, of survival.

MC: Absolutely. Secrets are powerful, especially when shared by a group. In the passage you quote, keeping things secret allows for the protection of a way of life worth protecting. Here, it would be the innocence of childhood. A secret that is hard to keep for long. But there are unintentional secrets as well. Something can become a kind of secret, especially for children, when there’s no one to listen to you. An entire inner world can become a secret, including what is causing you pain.

I have a very distinct memory from first grade, when it became a fad to look for four-leaf clovers outside during recess. I remember continuing to look for them into the summer when we moved to a new house. My secret search was related to all that I couldn’t yet put into words about cultural and physical displacement, about a sense of aloneness. So much of Kinderland’s power is in speaking this secret, letting us as adults, and now as English-language readers, in on the secret.

WF: Finally, do you think this is a book of memory or a book of imagination?

MC: If I had to choose between the two, I would choose imagination. because that is the consummate domain of children, and we see this story through Cristina’s eyes. Imagination is also what makes reality bearable and gives us hope that things will get better. That’s what I want for the children of Kinderland.

LC: I think that if I hadn’t been born in a small village, if I hadn’t gone through many of the small experiences I describe, I wouldn’t have been able to write such a book. How to milk a goat, how to put a plantain leaf on a wound, how to cook, how to take care of animals. The main characters are invented – they have no prototypes in reality – so it is a book of imagination. The main situations – the problem of migration, the state of the village, its life and spirit – are based on real data, so it is a book of memory. I cannot separate these two aspects.

When I was little, I could see from the stairs of our house three walnuts on the horizon, which, from a distance, looked blue. At one point, I went with my father to the horizon and saw those three walnuts. There, I felt the emotion described in the novel, attributed to the main character Cristina. And now, when I go home, I look at the horizon to see the three walnuts. They are still there, but Kinderland is not an autobiographical novel.

Liliana Corobca was born in the Republic of Moldova. She made her debut with the novel Negrissimo (2003), winner of the ‘Prometheus’ Prize for a debut awarded by the România literară magazine; the Prize for Prose Debut of the Republic of Moldova Writers’ Union and The Character in Inter war Romanian Novels (2003, translated into Italian and German). Her novels The Censor’s Notebook and most recently Kinderland were both translated into English by Monica Cure and are published by Seven Stories Press.

Monica Cure is a Romanian-American writer, translator, and dialogue specialist. Her poetry and translations have been published in journals internationally, and she’s the author of the book Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century (University of Minnesota Press). Her translation of Liliana Corobca’s The Censor’s Notebook won the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.

Interview by Will Forrester, Editor.

The post Letting Us Adults In on a Secret: An Interview with Liliana Corobca and Monica Cure appeared first on English PEN.

The first mention of a ‘gay slang’ in Istanbul was in 1999. But it was a very brief note, because the researchers were actually working on Romani languages in Europe and Turkey. During their research, they came across a gay man who was a Lubunca speaker and noticed that he was using many Romani words. They spent an evening together, recording him speaking with friends, and made a list of all the words derived from Romani. In 2012, when linguist Nicholas Kontovas researched the etymologies of Lubunca words, he was led to Romani, Armenian, Arabic and Greek words. These languages are no longer spoken widely in Turkey; that gives us an idea of how far back Lubunca goes. Kontovas found that words derived from Turkish form only 32% of Lubunca vocabulary, and that 30% are from Romani.

A lot of Lubunca vocabulary is related to sex work and sexuality. In the Ottoman era, it was mostly ‘Gayrimüslims’ (non-Muslims) who were allowed to do sex work. 70% of Ottoman brothels – registered brothels – were owned by non-Muslims. But with the arrival of the Turkish Republic, the nationalist and nation-building regulations of the new regime barred non-Muslim minority groups from working in registered brothels and from occupying any kind of official position in society. That’s why, at the same time, we begin to see a change in society’s perceptions of queerness – until then, particularly male femininity was truly celebrated. We see examples of this in literature, we also see it in köçek dance, which was a very popular traditional dance performed in Ottoman society. Homosexual sex work and homosexuality were never banned in the Ottoman era but, gradually (following in the footsteps of countries like England and France) homosexuality and transsexuality were increasingly seen as deviant. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottomans banned places where homosexuality was conducted. In the same period, all minority-group sex workers and queer sex workers were banned from continuing their work in a registered, legal way. They had to work illegally, and this created solidarity between oppressed groups – non-Muslims, sex workers, trans and queer people – and resulted in a new language variety that we now call Lubunca.

Are there written records of Lubunca? Or is it only spoken? And, if there are records, whose are they?

There are some examples in literature, but they don’t give us a complete picture. The accounts are mostly by queer people living in Istanbul, in the Şişli district, where we are right now. Here is its birthplace, the language originated in Beyoğlu and Şişli. The communities we’re discussing lived predominantly in these areas, which were known for their brothels. That’s why it started here and is still spoken here. The 70s, 80s and 90s were the ‘golden era’ of Lubunca, particularly on Ülker Street in Beyoğlu, a place where mostly trans sex workers and queers – actually ‘Lubunyas’– lived. I can’t imagine a place – a street in Turkey – where more than 100 trans people live. But that’s what happened in Ülker Street in that era.

You mentioned that it was labelled ‘gay slang’. What is the difference between gay and Lubunya?

‘Lubunya’ is not just a gay person, or a lesbian, or trans person. Lubunya is a person who lives outside the social reality and norms of Turkish society. A Lubunya is a queer person who lives a non-normative lifestyle.

Why was Ülker Street the meeting point for Lubunyas? Was the community self-formed?

It was all about what kinds of jobs you could do. In the 1970s, if you were a trans person you could work in nightlife, you could sing in a club (if you had a good voice), you could do sex work, or you could be a bar hostess. These jobs were all available in Beyoğlu. The place was full of clubs and bars, which is why the queer community across Turkey came and started to get together in Ülker Street. They created a community in which they did not have to do sex work. Yes, they could do sex work, but they didn’t have to. They changed the reality of the society they inhabited into a place where everyone had different responsibilities and lived together without caring about how they looked; they were out of society’s reality. We now call this phenomenon ‘Ülker Street Culture’ – a solidarity culture that creates a reality where trans people live in solidarity without caring about social norms.

If we think of Lubunca as a language of many languages, I also wonder about the many groups who lived on Ülker Street who were not Lubunya. When I see activism across LGBT+ communities in Turkey, I notice the solidarity between different oppressed groups. So was this a physical space where those different groups lived, literally, side by side?

Yes, totally. In the Ottoman era these areas were where Greek, Armenian, Romani, Jewish people lived. Later, the Republic’s nationalist regulations forced most of them out of the country. Beyoğlu and Şişli are still highly populated by minority groups, who were part of the network of Lubunyas and contributors to Lubunca. When we speak Lubunca, we are continuing this tradition; we are carrying the legacy of those people, even if we are not Greek or Armenian.

Could you give me examples of the types of things that you would say in Lubunca? Are some people not meant to understand it? Is it a secretive language?

It’s secretive to a certain extent. The syntax and morphology are mostly Turkish, but it’s a relexicalised language variety – by which I mean that words either change their normative meaning or incorporate roots derived from other languages. Lubunca has tended to be called ‘slang’ – there’s very limited research on Lubunca, and one of the three significant publications about it calls it ‘gay slang,’ which I think excludes women – but I don’t think it’s slang.

What would you call it?

I call it an anti-language, because what differentiates Lubunca from standard Turkish is that it shows us how the Lubunyas’ reality differs from hegemonic reality. Lubunya society is a kind of anti-society, an alternative reality. So today I would call my friend up and say ‘Abla, what are you doing?’ ‘Abla’ means ‘sis’, as in sister. People on the street would probably not call my friend ‘abla’ because they wouldn’t define them as ‘woman,’ but by saying ‘abla’ I’m affirming my friend’s gender, and expressing that in my reality that type of closeness is like being a part of my family.

‘Abla’ is gender-affirming if I’m referring to a woman, but it’s also used for non-binary people like me. In my research on Lubunca, I asked one of my friends, ‘Why do you say “abla” to this non-binary person?’ and they said they use ‘abla’ for anyone around them who questions the privilege of masculinity and the social position of masculinity in our society. This also reflects the fact that the social hierarchy of Lubunyas is a matriarchal one, not a patriarchy. It’s the opposite of saying ‘what’s up, bro’ to anyone, of any gender. It’s ‘what’s up, sis’.

I understand that Lubunca is also about creating labels to describe types of people or roles in society, which can be used as code for safety reasons – for sex workers, for example. In doing so, does Lubunca establish its own hierarchy and its own class system?

It’s true that Lubunca has many labels for people, and that those groups are not equal. It has its own social hierarchy, and is used for maintaining that hierarchy. The difference between Lubunca and standard Turkish is the social hierarchy itself; the one who has the least power in Turkish society becomes the most powerful in Lubunca. So, the trans woman sex worker is at the top in Lubunya communities. Being a trans woman and being a sex worker are respected and honoured in Lubunca. Can you imagine a customer walking into this café, and you turning around and say ‘hoş geldin, orospu’ – ‘welcome, whore’ – and how they would react? In Lubunca these words, which are derived from Turkish, have a completely different connotation and denotation. It’s something you say to someone you love, you might say ‘seni özledim, kevaşe’ (‘I’ve missed you, slut’). The meaning of the word changes. When I say ‘sex worker’ to someone I am saying ‘my love’, ‘honey’, ‘baby’ with respect, and with love. This is how the reality is created and maintained in Lubunca. It really shows that sex work is normalised, even appreciated.

Thinking about using ‘sis’ and ‘sex worker’ in that way reminds me of how slang used in queer communities of colour – for example the Ball Scene – has now become mainstream with shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race. Do you think that Lubunca could ever become widespread and mainstream in Turkey? Could it be co-opted, and does that pose a risk?

Kontovas claims that the popularisation of Lubunca would precipitate the end of Lubunca – like Polari disappeared at the end of the twentieth century. But I don’t agree, because I think this only focuses on the secrecy function of Lubunca. The other two studies on Lubunca, by Biondo and Acar, reveal it’s performative aspect. This is important in the aftermath of Ülker Street, where trans people got brutally kicked out by gentrification, the police and the mafia. It was awful, but something did come out of it: Lubunca began to spread across Istanbul and Turkey. Residents of Ülker Street moved to Ankara and beyond, carrying with them both the spirit of solidarity and the use of Lubunca. According to my research, variations of Lubunca have emerged, with Ankara Lubunca slightly different from Istanbul Lubunca. In a sense, the Lubunca that you speak now reflects where you are from; that’s the development of Lubunca, not the end of it. That’s the success of Lubunca’s visibility. It’s spreading online, too, being spoken on social media and YouTube. It’s secrecy function continues to exist, because in these YouTube videos we don’t see anything about drugs or about sex work, and instead we see a way to discuss identity, particularly gender identity. I see a lot of feminist cis women who use Lubunca because they understand the need for trans women to be in a higher position –positive discrimination, which is needed for equality.

If there is ever a situation in Turkey where there is queer acceptance in society and LGBT and sex worker rights are recognised by the state – which seem like an impossibility – do you think that Lubunca would disappear? Is it a political language?

Turkey will speak Lubunca. Turkish language has evolved in this cis heteronormative reality, but if Lubunyas are accepted then Lubunca will be standard Turkish.

And a final question. When I was a teenager growing up in Istanbul, discovering my own queerness and transness, I didn’t know anything about Lubunca. I had never heard it. When and how did you find out about Lubunca?

A language is the mother language of a member of a society, but an anti-language is the mother language of no one, because you should be a member of an anti-society first, and your reality will change with the reality of the society you live in. With this change, you will acquire an anti-language. That’s why I wasn’t a speaker of Lubunca when I was in high school. When I first came to Istanbul, I studied at Boğaziçi University, and there I acquired Lubunca through activism. Activism and Lubunca are deeply connected to each other because Lubunca is used for gender performance and reflecting queer, Lubunya identity: what I desire and what I require. Lubunca is the language of activism and that’s why many Lubunca speakers encounter it through activism, just like me.

After graduating high school in Antakya, a small town in Turkey, Lilith Bardakçı had the opportunity to study at Bogazici University’s Foreign Language Education Department. Bogazici University, renowned for its egalitarian culture, fostered their academic growth and played a pivotal role in their self-discovery. As a trans non-binary individual, they actively engaged with the LGBTI+ Studies Club at the university, assuming leadership roles as vice president and president. Recently, Lilith Bardakçı, an M.A. student at Boğaziçi University’s Linguistics Department, examines language’s connection to gender, sexuality and identities. As an LGBTI+ activist, Lilith explores Lubunca, a language phenomenon shedding light on identity, societal and cultural constructions. As Lilith continues expanding the boundaries of linguistic inquiry, they remain committed to promoting diversity, inclusivity and equity within academic discourse.

Interview by Sim Eldem

Photo credit: Cansu Yıldıran

The post Lubunca Is the Language of Activism: A Conversation with Lilith Bardakçı appeared first on English PEN.

Michael’s writing centres on poetry, and so it felt apt to incorporate the essence of poetry into his corporeal form through the very same medium. His eyebrows become haikus, his mouth the ever-laughing limerick, his legs bounding ballads. Poetry is eternal; through its creation, the poet becomes immortal.

The poem had its first public reading at the PEN Pinter Prize ceremony, and it was here for the first time that I met my co-performers, students from Argyle Primary School. They put me to shame. They knew their lines by heart (my ancient brain needed the security of pages). They flowed in and out of my reading, becoming the voices of the excited children – life imitating art. Two children on my left saying, ‘It’s him’ and three on my right, ‘He’s here’ – their performance was flawless, and at the end we all stood, rabbits in headlights, grinning from ear to ear. The children clearly didn’t want to leave the stage.

I often invite teachers in CPD (Continual Professional Development) sessions focussed on poetry to write and read a poem in groups. Often, the request is met with silence, or a look of are you serious?,or a shy, embarrassed giggle. We forget how difficult it is to get up on stage and share words. It is especially difficult to do so when you have spent the whole day learning in school, more so when you are performing in front of a bunch of adults!

Oh yeah, and the poet who wrote the poem is on stage with you… oh oh yeah, and the poet the poem is about is in the front row watching! I think most adults, if asked to do this, would have run for the metaphorical hills, not these kids, these kids… most kid, are incredibly brave. Just like Michael’s brave and fearless writing, these kids can inspire us all to get out of our own way, to take a leap, feet first on the meters of our legs, to find the beating poem of our hearts.

Rosen

Voices rise up
out of the auditorium.
the children are hungry for poems.

“Is he here yet?”
“Have you seen him?”
“Do you think he’s coming?”

The drooling children know
there will be poems today,
but who will be reading?

“I hope it’s him, I saw him on Youtube.”
“My Dad’s met him.”
“He visited my mum’s school.”

The children show-off their stories,
of the first poem they heard:

The one about the cake,
The one about the dog,
The one that was too hot.

“I like how he performs.”
“I like how his poems are like life.”
“I like how his poems mean something.”

The auditorium lights start to fade…

“Are you sure he’s coming?”

“I heard he’s coming”

“He must be coming.”

The adults that were standing,
necks craning,
failing to hide their child-like excitement
begin to sit,
feeling the weight
of adult bones once again.

His arrival is signalled by a wave
a tingling,
a collective outpouring of held breath.
a rush of:

“It’s him”,
“he’s here”,
“look over there!”

Smiles and eyes alight
on adult and child alike,
as he rhymes up onto the stage.

The haikus of his eyebrows wiggle,
and the audience are bound-up in poetry
travelling through time
on the meter of his memories.

The limerick of his mouth grins
and the audience are sharing a meal at his table
on the rhythm of his recollections.

The ballads of his legs
bound him across the stage
and giggles and laughter
wash through the theatre,
as they gasp together.

The anthologies of his eyes
hold them all
through the laughter and the thoughts,
through the ponderous delights,
through the gasps and the tears.

“It’s him” whisper the children.
“It’s him” breathe the teachers.
“It’s him” mouth the parents.
“He’s here” say all – remembering the poems
that will thrum within them forever…

“It’s Michael Rosen.”

“It’s Michael Rosen.”

“It’s Michael Rosen.”

Joseph Coelho is a multi-award-winning children’s author and playwright. His YA ‘Story told in poems’ The Girl Who Became A Tree’ was shortlisted for The 2021 Carnegie Medal and received a special mention from the Bologna Ragazzi Award 2021. He has written plays for Little Angel Theatre, Tutti Frutti Productions, Polka Theatre and The Unicorn Theatre amongst others. He is two-time winner of the Indie Book Awards (2019 & 2022) with Picture Books ‘If All The World Were… and ‘My Beautiful Voice’ respectively ‘(illu. Allison Colpoys). His Poetry Collection Werewolf Club Rules (Illu. John O’leary) won the 2015 CLIPPA Poetry Award. His plays for adults have received a special commendation from the Verity Bargate Award and been longlisted for the Bruntwood Playwriting Competition. He is Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2022 – 2024

Photo credit: Hayley Madden/Poetry Society

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