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.

When I was a child I never thought that home was somewhere other than Finland. I never asked my parents whether we would be moving back to Kosovo one day, and I never felt out of place. I never experienced any emotion of dislocation or otherness because the world I lived in was the only world I knew. When I started going to a Finnish school and having conversations with teachers and other students this changed drastically, and I realized that I was different from my peers – a refugee, an immigrant, an asylum seeker. Until that point I had no reason to think of myself as an outsider, to refer to myself as an immigrant, to think about where my home was.

During my school years I was frequently confronted by questions regarding my background, my ‘real home’, such as: ‘What is it like to live in a foreign country? Under such pressure, between two different languages, two different cultures, between religions?’. Or: ‘How does it feel when there’s a war in your home country?’ Answering these kinds of questions made me exceptionally uncomfortable, I truly feared them, and eventually I got into the habit of avoiding new people as I knew that the questions would start pouring in once I told others my Albanian name. I always felt that because of my background I was seen as less fortunate, that in the eyes of others I was traumatized, ruined for good, that my world was somehow shattered.

The way I saw it, there was no war in my home, no pressure in my existence, no violence in my past. Switching between Albanian and Finnish and knowing about both Finnish and Albanian traditions felt completely natural. It was painless, effortless, because I knew nothing else. This was my world, I had nothing else to compare my reality to. I quickly realized these questions offended me because they presumed that my life is somehow torn apart, divided in two, burdened with elements that don’t mix.

When my first novel My Cat Yugoslavia was published in Finland in August 2014, the media started referring to me as an ‘immigrant writer’. Because I have written a novel about an Albanian family living in Finland as an ethnic Albanian living in Finland, many assume that I am my protagonist, that I own a pet snake, that I am or have been in an abusive relationship and that my father is dead, just like in the story I’ve written. It made me laugh at first, and I wasn’t surprised, because as a student of literature I was aware of how debut novels are typically perceived.

Once I even got a call from a journalist who had interviewed me the day before. He said they weren’t happy with the pictures they had taken during the interview and suggested we take new ones. ‘Since it’s such a warm day, could you come out with your pet boa?’ he asked. I told him with great resentment that I don’t have a snake. I’ve never had a snake. My Cat Yugoslavia is just a book, a work of fiction, and I don’t keep a talking cat as a companion either.

I gradually became increasingly irritated by the label I was given, and I became more and more offended by the headlines about me and my work: ‘Experience Finland Through the Eyes of an Immigrant’, they’d say, ‘This Is What Being a Foreigner In Finland is Like’, or, ‘To a Migrant Finland is Cold and Racist’.

Being labeled like this made me extremely sad because what made me pursue a career in fiction was the ability to tell stories – fates free from labels, stereotypes, prejudice and oppression. It proved that I’m still being seen through a filter, that what I feared the most as a child is still happening and present in my life, in my career as a writer of fiction. I’m not seen as a creative individual, I am just a face for an audience, a bridge between ‘us’ and ‘them’, an interpreter of worlds. Even though I had written a novel in Finnish, even though I had lived in Finland my whole life, even though I had graduated from a Finnish university, I was seen as someone from the outside, as someone who speaks from the sidelines, as someone who’s in the margins of Finnish society.

The implication is this: that this is not my home, this is not my country, this is not my language.

I’ve been a writer for only a few years, but during this time I’ve been asked countless times about migration, racism, nationality, the situation in the Middle East. ‘What should we do with all the people fleeing the area and coming to Finland?’ Or: ‘Would you care to share your thoughts on how Finland could perform better in assimilating refugees?’ As if I had exceptional insight or an answer to one of the biggest questions of our time because of my background. Needless to say, being an immigrant or a refugee doesn’t make anyone an expert in immigration, nor does writing about an immigrant family.

Placing a person, a writer, an artist, in a category – whether it’s as ‘woman writer’,  ‘immigrant writer’, ‘refugee’, ‘gay’, ‘Muslim’ – jeopardizes what they can do and create, threatens their freedom to express themselves the way they see fit, and endangers the uniqueness of every single story.

Nowadays, when someone asks me about my personal story and the world I was raised in I say that it’s simply beautiful, it is whole, and every language I know and every country I’ve lived in has made my life fuller and richer and more wonderful. That’s what I say, maybe annoyingly so, when someone asks me about my home country. When they ask me about the war I say that even though I’ve experienced loss and grief, I am very lucky because I get to do what I love. I’ve had success early on in my career, I am privileged and very fortunate to have people around me who support and understand me and what I do. I tell them this because it is the truth. I am an artist, I get to be my home, my own language, my own culture.

I am a country.

My Cat Yugoslavia is available from Pushkin Press. Photo credit: Giuseppe Milo on flickr.

The post Against labels appeared first on English PEN.

That river flows in a valley not too far from my village, only an hour’s drive, more or less.

My friend sent me the photo because she wanted to share with me that sunny afternoon, the two of them reaching the river, taking a dip, diving from a rock, swimming in the cold water. I can imagine their laughter, the sound of the river, the sun and the wind on their skin, the cool shade under the trees.

It seems such a beautiful place, quiet and peaceful and still.

Nothing is moving – it’s just a photo, after all – but from the moment I saw it I knew I had a story to tell. A story about the man and the woman resting on the beach with their rucksacks and towels: do they love each other? Are they just friends? Siblings, perhaps? Do they secretly want to split up? Are they waiting for someone? Is someone else watching them, unseen? What are they thinking about? Do they want to run away, or are they about to dive in the river?

I told myself: ‘Someday you’ll write a story set on that beach surrounded by trees’. I’m not saying I’ll do it for sure: I’m just saying that I would love to do it, that today I’m still thinking about it, that something happened when I first saw that photo, when I first saw that bend in the river, that beach.

This is how my imagination works, I suppose: mysteriously, the process of writing always begins with a place. This is the power of places and landscapes – rivers, woods, cornfields, roads, paths, hills, villages, gardens, lawns, houses, a bridge, a factory, an old mine, a creek: they contain stories – dozens of them – as if they were books, and somehow they compel me to tell those stories, to write them down. Just like that beach that lies in the memory of my cellphone, places are my fuel, my inspiration.

But there is much more than that. From the first story I wrote, up until my latest novel, Can you hear me?, places have always been characters. They have always been anything but backdrops. They have their own voices – even their silence is a kind of voice, a beautiful one – their moods and their thoughts, and I can feel them. I need them. I crave them.

Can you hear me? is full of characters because it is full of places. The woods in which Elia and Stefano wander to find an antidote to the boredom and emptiness of summer are characters, as well as the hills, the abandoned cotton mill, the gas station, the old mine, the kitchens and bedrooms and porches.

The creek is a character too, the one I think about more often, as if it were one of the protagonists. When Elia’s father, Ettore, takes the girl to the bank of that creek, one August night, and forces her to sit on a trunk, the two of them are not alone: there is the water, the stones, the mud and the bushes too. There is the waterfall and the slippery rocks. The wind that blows through the leaves and the sound of the waterfall are like a cry. The creek is crying for Ettore, not just for the girl, and I can feel its compassion.

Places have their own nature. Somehow they are able to talk, act and react, even though they might seem so silent and still – in truth, they are full of life: little, barely-perceptible, sometimes invisible movements. They constantly look at other characters and constantly whisper their words into their hearts. Above all, they hide their secrets. They are a mystery, like all of us.

So, let’s go back to the photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone, like an amazing, strange, ancient fish at the bottom of a frozen lake. My friend and my son – he’s only ten years old – don’t know how much it touched me, how often I take my phone, dig in its memory, find that picture and look at it. How could I explain how I feel, the impression of life, the stories that beach whispers to me?

I answered the message she sent me – ‘We’re here and we’re having fun!’ I texted I was happy for them. I wrote: ‘Wow: what a place! I’d like to go there sometime.’ That’s it. Everything else is my secret, the process of my imagination, the voices I imagine to hear, like the cry of the creek, that August night, in Can you hear me?

The man and the woman are still on the beach with their rucksacks and towel, apparently motionless. I’m sure sooner or later they’ll do something and say something, because of that place surrounded by trees. It will make them breathe and move and talk. It will bring them to life. They’ll live there forever, as Ettore – the most hidden part of him – will live forever on the bank of that creek, in the dark, near the water, hearing that place crying and silently responding to it – what a place.

Yes, what a place.

Can you hear me?  is Elena Varvello’s first novel to be published in English, translated by Alex Valente, and is out now with Two Roads Books.

Photo credit:  Federico Botta

The post Elena Varvello on the power of place appeared first on English PEN.

That river flows in a valley not too far from my village, only an hour’s drive, more or less.

My friend sent me the photo because she wanted to share with me that sunny afternoon, the two of them reaching the river, taking a dip, diving from a rock, swimming in the cold water. I can imagine their laughter, the sound of the river, the sun and the wind on their skin, the cool shade under the trees.

It seems such a beautiful place, quiet and peaceful and still.

Nothing is moving – it’s just a photo, after all – but from the moment I saw it I knew I had a story to tell. A story about the man and the woman resting on the beach with their rucksacks and towels: do they love each other? Are they just friends? Siblings, perhaps? Do they secretly want to split up? Are they waiting for someone? Is someone else watching them, unseen? What are they thinking about? Do they want to run away, or are they about to dive in the river?

I told myself: ‘Someday you’ll write a story set on that beach surrounded by trees’. I’m not saying I’ll do it for sure: I’m just saying that I would love to do it, that today I’m still thinking about it, that something happened when I first saw that photo, when I first saw that bend in the river, that beach.

This is how my imagination works, I suppose: mysteriously, the process of writing always begins with a place. This is the power of places and landscapes – rivers, woods, cornfields, roads, paths, hills, villages, gardens, lawns, houses, a bridge, a factory, an old mine, a creek: they contain stories – dozens of them – as if they were books, and somehow they compel me to tell those stories, to write them down. Just like that beach that lies in the memory of my cellphone, places are my fuel, my inspiration.

But there is much more than that. From the first story I wrote, up until my latest novel, Can you hear me?, places have always been characters. They have always been anything but backdrops. They have their own voices – even their silence is a kind of voice, a beautiful one – their moods and their thoughts, and I can feel them. I need them. I crave them.

Can you hear me? is full of characters because it is full of places. The woods in which Elia and Stefano wander to find an antidote to the boredom and emptiness of summer are characters, as well as the hills, the abandoned cotton mill, the gas station, the old mine, the kitchens and bedrooms and porches.

The creek is a character too, the one I think about more often, as if it were one of the protagonists. When Elia’s father, Ettore, takes the girl to the bank of that creek, one August night, and forces her to sit on a trunk, the two of them are not alone: there is the water, the stones, the mud and the bushes too. There is the waterfall and the slippery rocks. The wind that blows through the leaves and the sound of the waterfall are like a cry. The creek is crying for Ettore, not just for the girl, and I can feel its compassion.

Places have their own nature. Somehow they are able to talk, act and react, even though they might seem so silent and still – in truth, they are full of life: little, barely-perceptible, sometimes invisible movements. They constantly look at other characters and constantly whisper their words into their hearts. Above all, they hide their secrets. They are a mystery, like all of us.

So, let’s go back to the photo that lies asleep in the memory of my cellphone, like an amazing, strange, ancient fish at the bottom of a frozen lake. My friend and my son – he’s only ten years old – don’t know how much it touched me, how often I take my phone, dig in its memory, find that picture and look at it. How could I explain how I feel, the impression of life, the stories that beach whispers to me?

I answered the message she sent me – ‘We’re here and we’re having fun!’ I texted I was happy for them. I wrote: ‘Wow: what a place! I’d like to go there sometime.’ That’s it. Everything else is my secret, the process of my imagination, the voices I imagine to hear, like the cry of the creek, that August night, in Can you hear me?

The man and the woman are still on the beach with their rucksacks and towel, apparently motionless. I’m sure sooner or later they’ll do something and say something, because of that place surrounded by trees. It will make them breathe and move and talk. It will bring them to life. They’ll live there forever, as Ettore – the most hidden part of him – will live forever on the bank of that creek, in the dark, near the water, hearing that place crying and silently responding to it – what a place.

Yes, what a place.

Elena Varvello is an Italian writer. Can you hear me?  is her first novel to be published in English, translated by Alex Valente, and is out now with Two Roads Books. Photo credit:  Federico Botta

The post The power of place appeared first on English PEN.

Full Circle Projects runs multi-stage initiatives that start in, leave, and return to, the same space. It is my goal to harness the creative spirit of people from marginalised and forgotten communities, including those in prison, and provide them with a dynamic space in which their voices can be heard. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England, the first Full Circle Projects initiative, My Search for Meaning, launched in December 2015. My Search for Meaning takes its name and inspiration from the Viktor E. Frankl book, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, and wrote Man’s Search for Meaning in the nine days following his liberation after three years in Auschwitz.

I first read Man’s Search for Meaning in 2010. I was struggling with my chronic health condition, achalasia, at the time and Frankl’s book helped to revolutionise my perspective. Frankl’s belief that meaning gives life purpose, and that meaning can even be found in suffering, forced me to ask questions about what my life meant in that very moment, unwell but alive. These thoughts were a significant part of my decision to pursue a career as a writer; to feel that I must do it. This concept of finding meaning in your life not just in spite of, but because of your circumstances, made Frankl’s book the perfect text to build the first Full Circle Projects initiative around.

During stage one of the My Search for Meaning project I ran creative writing sessions in HMPYOI Isis, HMP Belmarsh, HMP Wandsworth, HMP Brixton and HMP Pentonville. Participants wrote stories, poems, and autobiographical essays around the theme of finding meaning in their lives. Each participant also received a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning at the end of the session; theirs to keep.

Today, the My Search for Meaning project will be at Goldsmiths for stage two: a spoken word event. Five incredible wordsmiths will perform selected work from the aforementioned prisons, and will also share how they find meaning in their own lives. I am honoured to partner with English PEN on this event, and when looking at the genesis of Full Circle Projects it is also incredibly fitting. The event this evening will be recorded and stage three of the project will see me return to the prisons to screen the live event for those who participated in the workshops, and others who would like to see a spoken word show.

I am passionate about the work I do in prisons. I have witnessed so many powerful moments during creative writing sessions, and none more so than on the My Search for Meaning project. I wholeheartedly believe that when we provide people with the space to explore their own humanity, we very often see them rise to the occasion. It is transformative work. Research suggests a very strong link between having access to the arts while in prison and a reduction in reoffending; those who work in prisons know this first-hand. We also cannot underestimate the power of reconnecting those who are serving time, particularly longer sentences, with wider society before their release. What I did underestimate, is how much interest there would be from the general public to engage with prisoners in this way. Demand for My Search for Meaning: An Evening of Spoken Word in Prisons was so great we had to change venues, and sold out within an hour of releasing additional tickets.

Selling out the live event is encouraging, but for me the success of the project will be measured during stage three, when I return to the prisons and once again spend time with those who took part in the workshops. It is when I see them enjoying the live event, when they tell me what it was like to see their work performed, when I get their thoughts on the book, when I hear how the project has affected them; that is when the project’s success will be determined, and the project will be complete.

There are many organisations who have been doing this vital work in prisons for many years, English PEN of course being one. Through the My Search for Meaning project I have joined an audacious community, achieving great things against the odds. The next Full Circle Projects initiative will be on its way (funding willing) in late 2016. I am so looking forward to doing it all again.

Keep up to date with developments at Full Circle Projects, on the website – fullcircleprojects.org.uk.

Find out more about English PEN’s work in UK prisons.

Listen to Femi Martin’s radio programme, The Achalasia Diaries, on BBC Radio 4.

Read English PEN’s Prison Writing Competition anthologies, including Running to Stand Still.

Meet the writers who lead creative reading and writing workshops for English PEN.

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