I was honoured and humbled to have my work accepted for this wonderfully researched and curated event recently. A diverse set of voices: philosophers, artists and poets all under one roof in a stunning and grand period building on the university campus. With the brief in mind, I wanted to create a diverse set of poems with abstract or concrete images and place the characters in varying contexts so the mood and tone is very different in each yet they’re all linked together under the larger theme of evil, suffering and hope. A couple of them are very different to the first drafts and the struggle I faced was fact-finding, researching and talking to the right people. The poem ‘Coma’ allowed me to go further in imagination and give the soul a solid and audible narrative voice within a realm of mystery. This poem in particular is playing with a very different style of writing so this was a personal challenge that I enjoyed very much.
I hope that at the same time I’ve been able to address injustice, inequality, and how they’re a direct product of explicit or implicit power structures, whether present in a relationship or society at large.
Overall, a tremendous experience, insightful and connective, engaging and revitalising. (I must admit, when I walked in and saw my poems beautifully presented on a canvas I felt my legs turn to jelly 🙂 ).
It was great for networking too – made some new links!
Thank you to the organisers, project leaders and everyone who came to support the event. I hope that this is the first of many more to come. I’ll be adding clips of the poem recordings on Instagram (@njpoetessa) over the coming days.
Nabila Jameel 