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Zainab Imran
2.1k Plays1 year ago
Zainab Imran is a poet, tutor, zine-maker and English Literature student of British Pakistani heritage based in Manchester, England. She writes on a multitude of racial and queer issues, with a particular focus on ethnic diaspora and the hidden stories of women in the colonial struggle. They currently run the poetry collective, 'Poets for Partition'. In 2022, she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature and Sky Arts Award for Poetry as an emerging writer of colour, through which she is now being mentored by Jay Bernard and is also currently working towards her first poetry pamphlet.
This episode is a typical Iliad, poetry, Manchester, Industrial Revolution, Marx, History, What is Art?, Kirchner type of episode.
Zainab Imran website: https://zainabthepoet.co.uk/
Follow on Instagram @dark.academia.zainab and on Twitter @darkacademiazen
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Transcript
Introduction and Host/Guest Presentation
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Zalante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Manchester: A Hub of History and Education
00:00:15
Speaker
but yeah you you're talking about the Manchester and the buildings and the layout tell me a little bit about that yeah it's it's mad now that i think i it's beautiful it's a gorgeous city in the sense that it's
00:00:31
Speaker
a combination of urban but very natural in the way that it's urban, both modern and quite ancient, kind of pre-20th history. It's not ancient really, of course.
00:00:46
Speaker
But you know what I mean? It's very industrial, and I know a lot of people aren't really a fan of that maybe, but I think personally it has its own charm, it has a real history that comes from Manchester obviously, it's like the cotton industry, the textile industry.
00:01:06
Speaker
The fact that it has come through adaptations and it's kind of translated into sort of living and accommodation because it's a very attractive city for students. We have so many international students. It's about, I think, a third of our economy is made up of students themselves. Really? Wow. It's mad. And generally, I think it's just a hub for all things art, all things media.
00:01:32
Speaker
which is, you know, where I happily, happily support and, you know, want to always step in with whatever projects going on. But yeah, I can I can be more grateful to be a Manchester. But yeah, yeah, well, I can I can we have a lot of connection as far as maybe at least being around that grew up in
00:01:55
Speaker
Oh, you're going to dig this. I grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, East Coast. Wow. Oh, nice. So check this out, the connection with Manchester and all that stuff. The first mill was put on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. So it's deemed the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.
00:02:19
Speaker
So cool. Yeah, so they stole the plants from over there in England, dragged them here, right? This dude said, I figured out how to do this, put it down. And so it powered, it powered, so it was on the river, the mill. And what it did was it powered all the mechanics to, they would call it mule spinning with the fabric and the wool and all those mechanisms. So that's how it was powered.
00:02:49
Speaker
where I grew up was like the earliest kind of like industrial U.S. area. And that's what I grew up in the after, you know, like 1980s. You know, kind of like the collapse of the same kind of trend you see in England where that collapse in the 80s of the, you know, Thatcher and Reagan and all this conservative ideology.
00:03:13
Speaker
But that's a long story. I I'm guessing, you know, we're going to be able to talk about probably a billion things, but we should probably like welcome the listeners into.
Meet Zainab Imran: Poetry and Personal Expression
00:03:24
Speaker
Since since we've been waited to talk with each other. We haven't talked yet. We've just emailed but we We connect probably and I want to learn a bunch really about the things that you do, but everybody we're talking with Zainab Imran is that the best pronunciation? Zainab Imran We're reaching her from as you might heard talking a little bit about industrial background from Manchester England and
00:03:55
Speaker
And, uh, I just really want to welcome you onto the, onto the show. Yeah. I wanted to say just the chance happening of what, what I dig is, um, just seeing you read poetry and I'm very kind of impacted by when you see a poetry performance that's like that, um, like.
00:04:17
Speaker
You know, I still have that sensitivity. So that I just saw that. And, um, then I saw you made zines and, uh, you work and kind of like, uh, work with community organizing and you're active in the community. So a whole bunch of things to talk about, but, um, why don't you just, uh, tell us a little bit about, you know, some of the things you're doing, like maybe even start with the zine and the type of poetry you do would be a great introduction for the listeners.
00:04:45
Speaker
Of course, thank you. That was such a gracious introduction, regardless. So thank you so much. It means so much. Yeah, I think I began poetry, I want to say in written form. I guess around early sort of adolescent young adult kind of vibe, I'm gonna say around the age of maybe 14, 15 is when I got serious, I guess. 10, 11, 12 is when you're kind of
00:05:13
Speaker
figuring out how to rhyme and everything because they've been, you know, giving you the awful kind of, I guess, poetry that you don't really gel with at that moment, then, you know, you start to sort of step, put your toe in here and there and whatnot. So.
00:05:29
Speaker
And then I think I never, I didn't get serious about it until I want to say maybe two, two and a half years ago, about like performing. And that comes as a shock to people, of course, as well. I did have some, yeah, some shock in that.
00:05:49
Speaker
I think I just was very much like still finding my footing in the literature scene because I'm a huge reader. I love reading. I do an English degree and I want to pursue sort of academia within like English and creative writing especially. I think I kind of realized as much as I can love Larkin, as much as I can love, you know,
00:06:15
Speaker
I have a special place, my heart for Robert Frost, especially as well. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Cannot be, cannot be Frost in my opinion. And I feel, I feel like I then kind of gelled back into the contemporary UK scene of poetry, which is very much not as developed, unfortunately, as the Americans thing, because yeah, you have brilliant American poets, I think, but I definitely. Oh, sure. Yeah.
00:06:42
Speaker
Nowadays, I'm sort of like Chen Chen, Carve Akber. I'll talk more about obviously the poets that really inspire me. They get to write down mine so we can get back to it too. Keep going. Yeah. But yeah, I think I definitely just picked up on poets from the UK of like
00:06:59
Speaker
diaspora especially that is it's really interesting it is kind of an aged term to say like a diaspora poet or a poet from you know a person of color a poet of color because i feel you know they're they're everywhere like it's not like a unique kind of individual label we can give anyone i think anymore because it is very much leveled out the playing field from i'd say like the late 90s
00:07:26
Speaker
But it definitely was kind of seeing how people take colonial history, post-colonial history and immigrant history, especially as well. And Manchester is very much just an immigrant hub next to London. London, Birmingham, these are all like the massive multicultural cities. But Manchester has its own rich, deeply, deeply rooted history in immigration, migrant-less sort of
00:07:56
Speaker
uh, windrush especially. So I think I was very much intrigued by the struggle from like the sixties onward. And I always say to my mom and like my parents, God, I have it easy when it comes to being a person of color compared to, and being like a creative, um, compared to whatever people had to go in the seventies. You can find more space in that sense. Like for you to, for you to do what you would like to do now, honest to God, it's, it's so much more.
Art as Protest and Creative Freedom
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, it is very much the idea of generating space and keeping space is very much something that isn't, I think, focused on enough because people will do an event, people will hold a space and it will happen and it will stay, not to repeat myself, but in space, it will stay kind of static there and never is there anything that comes from it or is it not further developed? So very much there are very few unique kind of events and
00:08:55
Speaker
companies, charities that I feel have really reached out and been able to nurture people like me and myself and, you know, so many of my friends who also, you know, performers, poets, writers. But I would say, yeah, it's kind of it's been a roller coaster for one thing and the zines is a whole other thing because that was I think I was very much frustrated by
00:09:19
Speaker
the inability to get published work. Yeah, absolutely. I think zines are the most underrated, yet arguably the most significant sort of object of creative history that not a lot of people have been able to
00:09:43
Speaker
I think be introduced to it's not even like a gate kept sort of creative community at all. It's so accessible. It's very much like anyone can do it. But then you kind of like
00:09:56
Speaker
why isn't anyone, you know, showing me what they're making in their spare time, they're collaging or, you know, picking flowers from their local park and something and being like, it reminded me of this person because we tripped over this stone and they fell into this bush and it was near these flowers. Like, there's gorgeous stories behind scenes, I feel. And I felt there's obviously not an artifice, but there's a certain authority when it comes to publishing, of course.
00:10:24
Speaker
And I love, yeah, I love the authority that I have with zines in that I can, you know, make it very personal or make it very private. And because it is nothing huge, it's nothing like a huge magazine or a quarterly sort of publication where you've got like a whole host of brilliant pieces of art, pieces of literature, pieces like reviews and everything.
00:10:48
Speaker
Um, so I guess it was kind of just me foolishly being like, I'm very frustrated by being rejected from publishers, um, or from magazines. Let me do something myself. And from then I was like, I actually enjoy it more than having to listen or getting, you know, a cold shoulder from a, from an editor. So you might think that's a bit malicious of me to say. No, but you're talking to about like,
00:11:19
Speaker
Um, being able to, to, to control and to like side and allow out what I found that I started like creating things regularly about four years ago, be paintings, podcasts, et cetera. Um, I found that, um,
00:11:40
Speaker
I had an experience trying to go through a way, you know, my life and history is tied to being a union rep. I'm moonlight with art. So I just became really fascinated by
00:12:00
Speaker
but just how I was trying to handle that and how I was trying to do that. I didn't want to have to go through anybody. I felt like I was at an age, I was like 45, I'm 50 now. So I'm like, I don't want to like,
00:12:18
Speaker
have to be asking people to go through things. I want to ask people directly who I want to talk to about doing the thing with me. I don't want to worry about the door. I want to be like, do you want to
00:12:30
Speaker
come talk and play. And so, and I think zines in that same type of way, I found very much the same. I'm like, well, I'm not trying to push out things to get published. I never had time or didn't dedicate myself in that particular way. I've had it's published, but I didn't spend a lot of time there. So with zines and podcasts and it seems like, well, you got an idea, push it. You don't have to ask anybody.
00:12:57
Speaker
And, uh, pretty freeing, huh? That is exactly it. It's that, yeah, the whole permission thing is kind of like, I think my dad was just saying today as well, like, imagine we're going to reach a point of where we have so much information at our hands that we're going to not know what to do with ourselves. I was like, well, we, we do know what to do with ourselves because we're doing stuff for ourselves. I think we're kind of, you know, not wanting to reverse gear and be like,
00:13:27
Speaker
is this okay according to, you know, whatever, whatever, do I need to go through here in this? You're like, no, you have the means you have the resources. So why not? And as you say, like being a union rep, was it you were saying, right? Yeah, how practical you have to be. And that is in of it. So because like, I'm going
00:13:47
Speaker
Not through it. I'm just recently we've heard, we had news of strikes within our university for about four weeks. Right. And so two weeks have gone by and obviously I've been through it for like three years. I'm so used to it. And I obviously, we all support the strike workers, but now they've kind of reached an ultimatum to agree. So they've cancelled, they've called off the strikes for now.
00:14:11
Speaker
But to go on campus and see people there every day, the same people as well, it's so inspiring. And I think you're right in, yeah, people within the zine community, especially very political people who I've met, who have, you know, altered the way I think about space. And the way I think, yeah, the people can really impact you when you when they talk to you about
00:14:37
Speaker
photography, when they talk to you about landscaping or any sort of kind of medium, they're very much authoritative and understanding of how to generate messages. And I think that's the main thing I like about art is message, because there is no such thing I think as
00:14:57
Speaker
you know, art without a message. And it's weird when people say to artists or musicians, you shouldn't be political. That is. Yeah, it's like like pull out pull out that thread and you know, the thing doesn't hold together. It's within that context. It's it's so controlling. It's so
00:15:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You must now not say things of import because you entered this milieu or something like that, you know Yeah, I I don't I don't know one of the things I wanted to mention And just are probably some of our thinking with the zine Podcast has a zine and we'll be putting out the second issue which is gonna be an all indigenous issue and
00:15:41
Speaker
Wow, yeah the second issue and it's you know DIY and Had the first issue but just like trying to display in a particular way Artists or the sounds that I've come in contact with like it'd be music and visuals or a special project and as you know like when you're into that tactile when you you know, you're in the bookstore you're looking through the zines they can be a
00:16:08
Speaker
particularly an incredible, as far as their composition, that there's thread or embroidery or, you know, it might sound kind of weird just talking about it, but there's all these different forms. And then you're talking about the super practical impact of a zine that says, you're a black man, you got pulled over. Here's what you do. Like a zine that you look at and be like, just remember, this would be a good thing to do and not to do, or
00:16:38
Speaker
I want to start a union where I work. What are the steps? You know, so just like, it could be so much, you know, artful and towards that, but it'd also be like, put this in your pocket and knowing when you're in this situation how to get out of it.
Connection to Literature: Personal and Political
00:16:55
Speaker
It's not even like a get out of jail free, but it feels like a little
00:17:00
Speaker
a little man in your pocket just giving you advice. Yeah, that's very true. And how you said about the different formats and the different art forms. And I remember one of my friends, they're an artist.
00:17:18
Speaker
they do architecture and they had this gorgeous zine that they posted online and it was just the pages were just letters like cut out letters instead of like actual pages so I think they were spelling a word and I couldn't figure out what it was I still need to ask them like show me that zine I really want to see it but even
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, as you said, some photography ones that I've seen, there was one beautiful one that's on my shelf right now of I got from a zine fest. It was of someone who'd taken pictures after their grandmother had passed away. And how I think it was about three months after how everything had been left untouched in the house. It's gorgeous. I will send you a picture of them as well, if I can find I think I can see it right there, actually. And
00:18:04
Speaker
the he was telling me how he hated how the hedge at the back garden had overgrown because she was so on it with like trimming the hedge constantly. Always see it one way. Yeah and I was like that's that hits really hard just the idea of what you leave behind and the fact that everything continues with the bereaved and with who has been you know kind of taken from you and the fact that you know the world the home the the home in of itself doesn't
00:18:33
Speaker
doesn't care for kind of static or kind of grief or anything. It just collects, does it? You know, it still grows, still collects water, collects stamp, collects, you know, mold in the ceiling. It's so poignant. So that kind of, that zine really brings me down to earth in
00:18:53
Speaker
And it is really depressing to kind of read. I don't read it all the time. Yeah, it's beautiful is all I can say this is very poignant. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted to um, I wanted to before I wanted there's a couple points like I stopped signs for myself here. It's not even the bigger. It's not even the bigger questions, but I wanted to take the opportunity because
00:19:18
Speaker
I've done, you know, done over 180 shows and I've had just a variety of different type of artists. And I've done it for long enough that I think back within a category and being like, what type of poets that I've had. And I just wanted to mention it just a bit. You know, within my first 10 episodes, I think I had Bunkhan Tuan.
00:19:42
Speaker
who's my friend B.K., who I went to university with, the University of Massachusetts, very close and dear to my heart. And he is just an incredible, incredible poet and friend in a collaborator of his, Joanna Valente, which is close to my last name, I had her on. And she talked a lot about a lot of gender issues and really socially important.
00:20:12
Speaker
issues. I remembered when I interviewed Seamus Murphy, who's the director for PJ Harvey, Polly Jean Harvey's videos, that she had done a book which explored Afghani land day, I believe it's pronounced land day poetry, like a style of poetry there. Right.
00:20:35
Speaker
And there's a few, like I've had just these incredible experience and talking about poetry. When you said Robert Frost, I want to tell you just a weekend or two ago, I was with my girlfriend, Jenny, and we were going through the Oregon garden where you can see hundreds, it's cold here right now or colder. You can see hundreds of plants and furs and trees and everything like this. And when we were going by birches,
00:21:04
Speaker
And I, I'm from New England. So I pointed out, Jenny, I got to tell you my special connection because Robert Frost did this poem, Burches, and I, where he sings it. He reads it in his gravelly.
00:21:18
Speaker
Robert Frost. I can't even possibly do it. New England boys. Oh wow, yeah. So I'm just, I hadn't thought about birch trees in a while. There are as many birches are out in the Western US as the US, but I had Robert Frost going through my head just like two weeks ago. So we just said Robert Frost. I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to talk about me. Robert Frost.
00:21:39
Speaker
Oh, that's brilliant. Oh my gosh. Yeah, famous poem, Burch's. And there you can find an audio recording of him reading that poem. It takes a lot from the mind, I think, when you hear a poet for Burch's. That's insane. That's such a brilliant connection that is as well. The one other thing I wanted to mention is
00:22:09
Speaker
I drop in and out of poetry, kind of like picking it up a bunch and then getting some more later on. But one poet that I really liked that I wanted to mention is Morgan Parker from the U.S., who did a collection of more beautiful things than Beyonce. I'm not sure if you ever heard of that. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So I wanted to mention Morgan Parker. And like you said, there are so many great
00:22:39
Speaker
um uh american poets find themselves like in independent presses and in such can you tell me um so you go out there and you're in front of a camera and you're delivering like important uh impactful poems no but just how do you see when we talk about poetry how do you see it is is that how you you know how you're putting it together in that form and in in in conjunction with
00:23:07
Speaker
Delivering it like you deliver it. What's that? What's that whole what's it means? Yeah, it's I sometimes wonder if sometimes a Poet that I'm kind of friends with the one time he said if he could be a singer he would have been a singer not a poet I was kind of like thinking like is that just what I want to do? No, it is the process is kind of like
00:23:38
Speaker
You just have a mind splurge, of course. And I think I definitely learnt from poets, other poets as well, is that the most mundane makes the most interesting conversation starter sometimes. So you can talk about, I think, you know, I saw this truck fly by me and I thought it was the tree kind of whispering run, but really it was a plastic bag coming outside from the back.
00:24:05
Speaker
And something like that, when you say that with some sort of, you know, conjecture and power to an audience, they're like, okay, but who was whispering to you? But like, you know, these kind of, you kind of have to realize how practical certain, you know, certain images can be when it's written down on paper. And I think it is definitely just looking at other performers that I've aspired to be like as well. And
00:24:34
Speaker
I am a huge believer in notes and just constantly raking through and making sure I know when to pause and I know when to hit an impact and everything because I love to kind of re- I hate the sound of my own voice but I, you know, record, read back and everything as well. That is an instinctual, I think isn't like an instinct thing now for me that I'm like, okay, does this make sense to my brain? How is that gonna, you know, process to others as well? But I think
00:25:04
Speaker
for performing it is pretty much this like how do I know what will fall flat and what will you know there's some times where where it's been like someone's come up to me afterwards they're like that line you did about you know the chameleon or something that hit me really hard that was brilliant and I'll be like that was not the line I expected to hit hard it's really it's so unpredictable as well because there are certain moments
00:25:31
Speaker
where you read a line very differently and you kind of alter the room and you shift it quite a bit, I feel like, as well as you kind of pronounce something a little more within a sentence rather than like the very final word. Because I feel like a lot of people assume the very final words are what can give you clarity about a poem. But I kind of disagree in that in that you have to kind of see what's setting up. And I love when poets set up something beautiful, something
00:26:01
Speaker
you know audacious or absolutely seemingly obnoxious and then when it ends in like a really blunt sentence you're like wow so you wanted me to get that thing initially but I was waiting for something else and now you just you know throwing me off my feet
00:26:17
Speaker
I'm yet to capture that perfectly. I know so many poets that do do that really well. But I think I was not very much. I was I'm still not very confident in performing madly enough, which, you know, sounds ironic because I consider myself a performing poet. So it's very ironic. But I'm still a hand on a hand, a phone in my hand or a notebook in my hand if I want to be a bit classy for the evening.
00:26:46
Speaker
And I just, I think having the ability to kind of look into someone and look, you know, eyes, windows, and soul, all that jazz, sure. But the idea of just interrupting yourself and kind of allowing disruption to emerge, I think is the thing that kind of keeps me wanting to perform is that I want to, sure, disrupt narrative, but disrupt the evening, disrupt the piece that people have carved in their minds about poetry because
00:27:16
Speaker
People see poetry as very peaceful, very, you know, clicking fingers, having a good time. And it is a good time. It's all over the freaking universe, all over the universe, and super small and tiny and...
00:27:30
Speaker
in huge too. Well, help me out on the performance and I want to talk about that because so there's pieces that I'll just talk about seen as effective when I first saw you that captured my eye and your delivery and what you were doing is you know even on what I saw is that the
00:27:50
Speaker
The angle is up towards you and your face is facing out and you're delivering and you're straight on delivering. I mean, it's just, it's just right there. And, uh, there's a confidence, but I see, I'm like, who is this? I see this job. And I'm like, and I, I'm reading about you back. No, like for me, I'm just, uh, I'm out here in Oregon. I'm like, and so I'm watching all of that too. And I wonder because.
00:28:20
Speaker
Poets are never meant to fit into the day. It's not like, oh, I'm walking down the street and the poet's just talking. That's wonderful. The poet's just talking. It's poetry. It's poetry. People are like, what's going on? So I get captured by that moment and by that there. And just to affirm it,
00:28:47
Speaker
It's both visually and sonically where you're looking in and you're following. What happens for you? You're the only person on the other side and you're standing there. Tell us about what you see from the audience or what that is. Yeah.
00:29:10
Speaker
What do I see? I thankfully see people, as you said, I really enjoy when people are very much enraptured because you, yeah, as you said, poets, we're not meant to have very exciting lives. We just kind of just walk around and, you know, sort of dig out sort of little treasures, sort of nuggets of ideas here and there. It is, yeah, it's a very
00:29:32
Speaker
mundane life. So when you, when you get up on stage, and when you, you know, when you put yourself there, when you see everyone, and it's so bizarre, because everyone is looking at you looking for you to kind of command and, you know, sort of change the way that they're thinking, because after every poet, you're going to change when it's an over mic, whether it's like a headline performance, whatever it is, you're going to change the way you thought about sure, that person, but also
00:30:00
Speaker
what a specific word meant or, you know, just so personal. Yeah. And so there it is. Yeah, absolutely. Like the image. I think the other night when I went to I did like a show or something, someone had a beautiful image of the sickle cell, which is well, it was a disease, obviously the sickle cell disease. Yes. But this, you know, image of the moon, this image of
00:30:27
Speaker
know, the grim reaper, this image of harvest, of a harvest moon, of expansion, of closing in, you can't get through your vessels. And I was like, staring at them in such awe. And I was like, wow, that's insane. And so when you, yeah, how people reciprocate to me, I think, is I see, thankfully, very much enraptured people and
00:30:51
Speaker
I love to kind of look up, look around just so everyone knows. I feel like a little teacher sometimes. I'm like, I want everyone to know I'm looking at you and I want you to take this in. It's not for me anymore. What's for me is, you know, the thousands of sticky notes I've written poems on that are under a floorboard. That's for me. This stuff is for you. And I, you know, I want you to absorb. I want you to, you know, rip it to pieces.
00:31:20
Speaker
afterwards if you want, if you can remember any of it. But I think, yeah, it's...
00:31:25
Speaker
And I love that people follow tradition and it's so unspoken when people like click their fingers, people saying yes, people saying woo. Halfway through, I'm like, I don't care about tradition at that point. I'm like, do what? Yeah, react. Show me. This is the Shakespeare, like the globe at this point. Just react. Tell me what you're feeling. Art free for all. Yeah, I'm sick and tired of one way communication with poetry because it should never be one way. And I think
00:31:55
Speaker
Mona Arshi is this brilliant poet. She describes it perfectly in that poetry. The best sort of poetry is meant to shift your atoms. It's meant to do something kind of like a bodily reaction almost. And I thought that is the most beautiful, gorgeous piece of advice next to, you know, life lesson about poetry that you could learn. And it's not even something you should aspire to either. It's just something you should look out for when you're going through
00:32:24
Speaker
listening to poets and being like, this did shift something in me. So thankfully, I don't get to see anyone sort of like, you know, tearing up or anything like that, that would send me off the edge completely. Yeah, well, yeah, if it, you know, the boundaries and the issues of, you know, reciprocity, or like, yeah, changes, exchange. I
00:32:49
Speaker
I wanted to, I want, we got to hit one of the big ones. We get one of the big questions here because like, you know, we can go in a lot of different directions, but I want to, so what is, and talking about art, I wanted to ask you one of the big questions I ask, what is art or what do you, what do you think art is? I love that. I actually, I love that question in fairness though. I think it's,
00:33:14
Speaker
It's such a, it's a scary one because it's like one of those ones you get in like a job interview or something. You could get like five billion different answers and they could still not hire you. But I think what I, I have a personal story for it to be fair. And even though in the, in the context of what that person said to me, it was talking about literature and the significance of literature, obviously art, literature, they all fall under, you know, same umbrella as you know.
00:33:44
Speaker
And I can't say I'm like a painter or a sculptor or anything, obviously, but I remember my... So we have something called A-Levels, which is just what we do before we go into college or university, right? And we just have to do specific... We specifically have to choose three to four subjects, and then you can choose from that whatever degree you want to do. So I kind of knew I wanted to do English, so I automatically did English literature. So I'm 16, I don't know.
00:34:13
Speaker
you know, what I want to do with my life, really. I want to be an author, but about 10 sort of counsellors have told me that's, you know, a kind of improbable, like, it's not going to happen to you, sort of, you know, not going to happen to you, but kind of just don't get your hopes up. And I remember my tutor, who I only had him for about six months, but he was very impactful.
00:34:39
Speaker
in that short amount of time and he said, he just asked us, what do you think the purpose of literature is? We were like, to store information, to make a reader, you know, relate to a character, to teach them, you know, all these like sort of mundane kind of answers that you'd expect. And then he goes, no, you're all wrong. We were like, oh, okay, sure. Yeah, we were like, okay, should we just leave?
00:35:09
Speaker
He was like, literature is an art, is the response to something wrong within society. It's when someone saw something horrific going on in the streets, it's when someone saw the French Revolution, someone saw slavery.
00:35:27
Speaker
occurring and said, this is wrong. This is not meant to be happening. I'm gonna have to respond to this. How do I, what do I do? How do I respond? And some of us aren't, you know, aren't endowed with sort of political power. We aren't very privileged. We don't have, you know, mummy daddy's money and able to sit in houses of parliament or in the Senate or anything like that.
00:35:54
Speaker
So we return to art and we make commentary. Sure, that is the right word, but I think a lot more just active protest. And you can look at it from any perspective, whether it's kind of like very emotional.
00:36:11
Speaker
And some people obviously don't say, oh, this is very narcissistic. And we are. I can't deny that we aren't because we kind of, you know, in a society where we're all like, you know, working together, the cogs are working together, you know, you're meant to be, you're meant to be functioning. There's X, there always tends to be excesses and then it can be excesses of ego, not to get into the whole psychology, but there's a lot.
00:36:35
Speaker
There's a lot. Absolutely. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So in and in no shape or form would I say that the ego is something that motivates all poets and all artists, though, either. Definitely. That's not how true art forms, though, I think is is the main thing. You know, you could argue that so many so many artists, so many poets are there for the ego, there for the, you know, the praise, but it is a lot more
00:37:02
Speaker
protest commentary I think and yeah just sure it is like the archiving and the keeping together of history keeping together is the awful phrase but kind of you know the restoring of history just so people understand
00:37:21
Speaker
the bucket loads of information we have now and the instantaneous click of your finger and everything's there for you. How does that come about through translation, through globalization, especially as well? Because art is so global. Art is meant to transcend language, is meant to transcend any sort of class, age,
00:37:45
Speaker
and I'd say like even gender, even ethnicity is meant to cross boundaries and it shouldn't ever be contained, whether it's contained within a community or contained from individuals, from other people, sure. But yeah, this idea is not very much, now it's not a communal activity, I feel it's very much like a public free-for-all, which I'm so happy, much more happier about.
00:38:10
Speaker
As far as the availability or the access or even things like distribution of getting things, you know, like, you know, getting getting part of me, getting your things out there. I I was an English lit and philosophy major, you know, an undergraduate and I.
00:38:31
Speaker
I went on to actually get a master's in philosophy, which that makes sense. And, uh, labor studies, which I ended up, you know, uh, doing, but, uh, I, I, I mean the literature, I've been like, uh, folks who are listening might not know there's a lot of books behind say, nah, but I haven't complained to her about this yet, but I've been like,
00:38:58
Speaker
Um, so she wouldn't know just like, I wouldn't know that when somebody is showing books in whatever way, the person who is obsessed by books, which I know we share is going to be the what the, what is that one and what the, what's that one in that even more. I know you live in Manchester, which is far away. So I'm guessing there might be a lot of different books that are really cool that you would have picked out that I wouldn't have seen. So.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right in just the difference in not really audience, but kind of the outreach, as you said, the distribution of, of literature and what, yeah, what you pick up, like when I go, so you'd have like a Barnes and Noble, do you usually go to like Barnes and Noble or like, let me, let me, let me stop. If rate, I got a bookstore that I've talked about right nearby. It's a used bookstore. It's a block and a half away from here. Browsers bookstore.
00:39:59
Speaker
And I get they, they're revived and we go, I go there and talk, uh, art and, um, but yeah, I got one nearby, but the big one still out here, just so you know, is Barnes and Noble is like the only big seller here in the U S that that's left. Um, sorry for that, Jack. I used to work in a bookstore, as you might imagine. So that's.
00:40:23
Speaker
please audience in Zainab just I'm not complaining I love it I know you want to talk to the book clerk when they're the book clerk so yes um literature literature and philosophy um
00:40:43
Speaker
How, how was, I'm sorry, I just wanted to ask how, yeah, like, what was it like doing the, um, turning to the philosophy side from kind of the combination of English and philosophy? Um, uh, it's a, I thank you for asking complicated, but I would say simply this, um, my first love is literature, not anything, whatever I cover or whatever I do in work or anything.
00:41:11
Speaker
It's literature, it all stems from there. But I think that I just wanted to explore the questions that I was dealing, not dealing with that. Why did I read compulsively? I read from an early age compulsively because it fit my mind. I went to different worlds. If I felt uncomfortable in the spot that I was in, I could read.
00:41:41
Speaker
And, you know, not sound like just like strange and quaint, but I could very much be somewhere else. And I started to interrogate like larger questions or things like reading like James Baldwin in the U.S. and the experience of African-Americans. And so then it was political. But all those questions punch towards the conceptual for me, at least the way my mind develops. So like I could always explore them in literature and poetry and other things.
00:42:09
Speaker
But
Books, Education, and Representation
00:42:10
Speaker
I wanted to train myself in, you know, that like maybe the art of philosophy or the art, you know, of talking and engagement and exploration. But I got to tell you one thing that I know only in retrospect, as great as that is and as helpful it is for me, it was so limited to that narrow cannon of white.
00:42:40
Speaker
Men were great philosophers, but only in retrospect that I truly realized because I kept studying on my own. Wow, that's an important piece, but good gracious, there's so much more.
00:42:54
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, that's when I went to school. It wasn't terribly long. It was long enough ago. But it's like, yeah, that's kind of how I feel, how I feel about it. I feel I'll be honest, I don't think it's changed, unfortunately, for a lot of places. So you're absolutely right. And in Yeah, that criticism is very like the only experience I've had in philosophy is because I do classics as a minor, I guess.
00:43:20
Speaker
So I took a course in Seneca, in Seneca philosophy. That was interesting. That was intriguing to move from, I moved from like, I had like an ancient, sort of like ancient origins kind of Greek poetry course. And then I moved to Seneca the next hour and I was like transported to Rome all of a sudden. But yeah, I love that you are kind of deeping and develop, you know, developing with the,
00:43:50
Speaker
with the philosophy. And yeah, I think questions are the most important thing we have as our tools. And that is like the main purpose of any sort of philosophical or literature kind of based discussion, whenever I'm talking to them, when I want them to, you know, always be willing to hear a question out rather than just be like, and I really enjoy when lecturers are kind of very interactive that way, even though some of them can be a bit
00:44:19
Speaker
a bit of a stretch and I'm not awake at night in the morning. Yeah. You've been 70 minutes in and they're way over here and you're like, you're explaining something to me. You're very far away from the rest of us. That can happen at the, at the union, right? Yeah, God. Um, but, uh, no, I have, you know, first love, first love literature. I, you know, really enjoy that. And I think one of the strange thing is, and I'm not sure if you've encountered this, but I've been, you know,
00:44:49
Speaker
intense in particular areas. And I think there's, when you're intensive or super interested in multiple areas, I know when I studied philosophy, I ended up being surprised because in my head, I thought that most people come philosophy be so deeply into the words, whether it was literature or fiction and all those types of things, was not the case at all because I'd look at their bookshelves and it'd be
00:45:14
Speaker
just studious and narrow and sequential and that's fine. That's their mind. But I was like, how do you do philosophy without having read a Faulkner or like, how do you, how do you, how do you do philosophy without, um, I don't know in my head, like Kathy Acker or like Leo Tolstoy or like Simone de Beauvoir, like, how do you, how do you do things without these influences?
00:45:41
Speaker
But that's unfair. That's the way my head works, but they did it this way. So I never disaggregated the, the literature and the philosophy and never could. And, um, one other final thing, as far as like the identity around that, when I was studying philosophy at Marquette university, it was the only time I went to private university and I got a scholarship to study there, very much a fish out of water or, or, or guests very much so.
00:46:11
Speaker
Um, but when I was there, everybody viewed me as this like super practical oriented, like kind of like I got the East coast accent as kids from the city. How do you end up at Marquette? Like all that into like books and words and weird things. So they always saw me as like that, like not fitting into the model of this. And then when I went to go into labor studies,
00:46:39
Speaker
Everybody thought I was the fufiest like theoretical, conceptual. Mr. like asked him about this super big question. I'm like, no, like I'm a new guy. Like I'm ready for the battle. And I found that time to be so fascinating. Cause I'm like, no, like, I'm one of you. Oh, so bizarre, but very much something I can imagine happened as well.
00:47:09
Speaker
Yeah. Who are you? And that's why not to go through on, but the literature and philosophy, they're globbed in my brain. Yes. They're, they're globbed. And I think if you go into different things like yourself, you see how things are just kind of, I don't know how to separate them out there. No, yeah, you're absolutely no, that's so true. I think
00:47:30
Speaker
I don't, I haven't felt that, but it's very much in my mind whenever I switch from like a classics, someone will ask me, Oh, what's your next essay on? I'm like, Oh, it's a classical literature one. I have to do, you know, this piece about, you know, plateau or something like that. And they're like,
00:47:46
Speaker
wow, how do you how do you know, keep that in your mind? How do you remember? I'm like, I don't. It's very much a thing of like, wow, this is really intriguing. How do you you know, class and as you said, like philosophy is I love that you brought up the thing like the fact that you're right. How do people not read fork now? How do they not read? For myself, I'd say Aldous Huxley, because he had a huge impact on me in the first year of university when I read
00:48:14
Speaker
I think I read Brave New World when I was 17. I didn't really understand it. And I read it again when I was 19. And I was like, I don't know how it shifted in my brain. That book really impacted me around 16, 17. I read it like four or five times. Yeah. Right. And it's brilliant. Yeah. Absolutely brilliant book. But you're right in that how you have people not read Baldwin, Audre Lorde, you know, like all these brilliant
00:48:42
Speaker
Yeah, poets as well, like HD or Anne Carson, who have had brilliant takes on, I think classical literature is obviously what I kind of really, it's a guilty pleasure for me at this point, as well as my degree. The guilty pleasure luxury that I shall indulge at any time that I ever want in my life. I don't have anything due for it, like no deadlines whatsoever. I can just do it in my free time. God, no.
00:49:10
Speaker
But yeah, just bring it when you bring up, I bring up Carson or something in like a, or no, I'd say it's the other way around. So one time I bought up like narrative theory, because I did a narrative theory course, and I bought up morphology, which is prop, Vladimir prop, he was this Russian
00:49:30
Speaker
narrative theorist. And I think I was just saying the way we know narrative is kind of working is the fact that we have these functions and these spheres of action, we have these characters are like the princess and the hero, the villain, the false hero. I swear someone just turned around and looked dead in the eye whenever I was saying that. I was like, you want to say something, you can say it, but I'm just sharing information. Yeah, I don't know what you want from me. But they will, I think they were like,
00:49:59
Speaker
in their heads, they were like, how does this apply to Homer? You know, right. Right. And you had it. I wanted to ask you, you know, I wanted to ask you about looking at your website and just listening as a South Asian creator. And I noticed a lot of things that you write about talk about this kind of like, like an action sphere. And I just wanted like,
00:50:23
Speaker
ask you about that group. I know you've done interview and you do poetry, but it's your thing, so I wanted to ask you about it. Yeah, I think it's so interesting because I feel like there's very much a gap for South Asian
00:50:45
Speaker
creatives to be able to freely discuss what they feel about, sure, current climate and kind of just the history of, I'd say from my first experience, like the UK's relation to South Asia. So when I created Poets Partition, I think I was very much
00:51:04
Speaker
In shock of myself that I didn't know Partition had happened and I always, it's really bizarre but you think of your homeland as just this place, you don't think of it as a third world country suffering. I'll be honest like I never knew it was a third world country or I didn't know it was going through so much turmoil because when you go and visit you just you have these little snapshots in your mind, you have these you know conversations and relations and everything.
00:51:30
Speaker
And then when you come back and you learn of history or when you hear, when you watch a TV program or something about it, you're like, okay, well, why is this just the one off? Why are people just talking about it once? Why can't I, you know, get people together and be like, so what are your opinions on this? Yes, I think this too. Oh, I've never thought of it that way. So I think post-partition was very
00:51:52
Speaker
very much like I got to meet some brilliant South Asian creatives that I did not have on my radar and now these people have like debut collections out, it's insane. So they're very much ahead of me of course in my journey but I think definitely I felt there was short an internal gap and
00:52:13
Speaker
a gap within the literature kind of contemporary literature scene that's going on. So like, the festivals, the award ceremonies that happen in the UK. So here we have like the forward prize. And it was like the first time after like, I think 30 years or something that I had come up to Manchester from London. It's always been in London, and I got on some tickets to go see it. And, you know, it's very unfortunate, there were very, very few, I think, I don't know how many South Asian poets were nominated,
00:52:42
Speaker
very few. And again, same with the fact that not a lot of people of colour were nominated for a lot of the prizes. So I think just I think the idea of voids, and whenever I see a void in myself, or I don't really see myself or see the conversations I want to have being, you know, they're just absent. And I'm like, okay, I have to
00:53:09
Speaker
have to be very practical and just be like, no, this is what I'm gonna talk about because, and I think, yeah, the issues I like to talk about as well are things that have been said and done and dusted and printed into a collection and never spoken of again, because you can be a poet, you can have a name, you can have 15 collections under your name and everything, but you will have that one poem in your brain
00:53:37
Speaker
And I will have that one poem in my brain where I'm like, from that one collection, why are we not teaching that in schools? Why are we, you know, not celebrating that as such a sort of significant poem that, sure, it's a personal thing that it changed my mind and it changed the way I look at poetry. But I think, yeah, it is kind of
00:53:56
Speaker
really odd in a time for South Asian literature has come to a weird simmering end in that we've not really seen anyone kind of like Shaw, Mohsen Hamid, or now we have people like Fatima Asghar, I feel, who's a brilliant, brilliant Kashmiri poet who's, you know, written for Disney now as well. But the main answer is kind of just absence and void. And it's
00:54:26
Speaker
like a therapy in a way is kind of like therapy in which is bizarre because so many poets do tell young poets and it's not even like in a dangerous sense to say but they do say go see go seek therapy first before you try and deal with issues that are very heavy and whenever I sit with like a mentor that I'm with so I'm with the Royal Society of Literature like I get mentoring from one of the poets there and they kind of a lot whenever I sit down with them I talk with them they're like
00:54:54
Speaker
okay, but you're not being clear about this issue. What are you trying to say here? Like you're not you're not extrapolating this enough. Like this is this is something internal in your mind. It's more for you. It's more for me. Yeah. And then I was like, this is getting very much is getting Freudian kind of like something deep set. I've not like turned over yet. So it is, in a way very therapeutic. But also
00:55:23
Speaker
just fulfilling, I'd say. And, you know, people expect kind of philosophical answers to that of like, why do you write about, you know, the struggle of colonial women? Why do you write about, you know, immigration and everything? I think it's it's not much, which is ironic to say, because I just said, like, art is a political statement, and it is. But it's not so much a political statement as much as it is a statement to assure myself that I
00:55:51
Speaker
I should be allowed and I'm allowed to talk about this. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say just allow doing like the doing in and I see that like an active in the doing in the creating of the vent. You are in it. You have done it. So I don't know. I feel that I feel that vibe. One of the things I wanted to mention, too, about poets on the show, like I said, if I had a lot of episodes, the voice of the show, Rachel Lally,
00:56:18
Speaker
that you hear is an Irish poet, actress, teacher, model, everything, but she's the voice of the show. And Jeff Finan I've had who's a Dublin and had a spoken word episode as well, say now, that I'll post this with the episode and the notes for folks and also send them to you. But so like I said, I had a lot and just like,
00:56:48
Speaker
I think too as a creator is like, what am I looking for in that? I tell you one thing about poetry, the one thing, and it's not sophisticated, but I know about my sensitivity to it. So I adore paintings. And when I look at a painting and a brilliant painting that
00:57:09
Speaker
a German expressionist encouraged me is like, there's something about the neurons in my head and what I see there and looking at that, that is an experience I can't describe. Poetry for me, and there's a whole variety of poetry, but there's sometimes something in poetry where what I'm trying to say as a philosopher, if I'm engaging in that, which is a useful way of trying to say it,
00:57:36
Speaker
fucking impossible going that route. Like you're trying, right? And you write your essay and then there's something and there was nothing before that. So there's something before that or like, or is it like something, something else? And, um, I don't know.
00:57:57
Speaker
There's a way of inflecting and showing something like a weird moment in the corner that is profound that you caught that I had one of those in the past.
Interpreting Poetry: Emotion, Imagery, and Impact
00:58:07
Speaker
And how do you explain that? How do you explain that? It was transferred and you're like, oh, I have permission to be like, remember that weird kind of cool event and like, whoa. And there's no way to there's no way to mediate that except for it. Yeah.
00:58:23
Speaker
That's so true. Maybe we figured it out together. I don't know if she's awesome. That's my other way of expressing it. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, that's me going into a primary school like an elementary school. Yeah, right. It's cool. I got a picture and a poster board. This is cool. We're going to have fun. And it's I wanted to I wanted to ask you and I and
00:58:50
Speaker
We had chatted about this and you're so excited on the the talking about the things but I had chatted with you about possibly reading a poem of course that I was I'm so delighted you asked because it's
00:59:06
Speaker
you know, very, no one of course, as you know, wants to hear a poem. That's something rather than nothing is dedicated and loves poets. I appreciate you guys. Gosh, thank you. Yes. So yeah, I'm more than happy. So I thought I you'd kind of said
00:59:28
Speaker
to do with like the change of being and, you know, change. And I thought this poem, I think it features, well, it features a Volta, I guess, so I can say technically, it is very much within the realms of change. But I kind of wrote this from a prompt, I'd done a couple of workshops with post-partition, and I kind of selected a few prompts from news articles about partition and immigration and everything and how
00:59:57
Speaker
You know, it's bizarre how doubled kind of partition occurs. There's an immigration and then, you know, the inviting of economic and like, sort of, you know, labor from the West, from, well, you know, inviting people from India, from Pakistan, Sri Lanka. So I think I was just really intrigued by this one statement a writer made.
01:00:23
Speaker
But I will read the poem and if you like, we can discuss it after because I much prefer kind of discussing after or however you want, yeah. So the title is Serka. I will explain the title after. And the statement, the kind of epigraph is, their history is refugee, their origin is immigrant. And that's by Priti Taneja, who is a writer discussing partition survivors that now live in Britain since the 80s and 90s.
01:00:53
Speaker
The mantelpiece is graying with such clusters of home and our Christmas tree is weighty with baubles the size of ladoos is shining green like a passport green as the suitcase I came in outside a line of Molotov cocktails sit behind the bins our front garden is fermented with the vomit of passing pub goers
01:01:22
Speaker
I honor that suitcase, patching, balding like a relative around his edges. He sits above the fireplace, like a tired imp, squatted on ignorance. I hold it in the kitchen, not by my side as though I'm going somewhere, but raised up as though I leave parliament with another life in a leather capsule. Tonight,
01:01:49
Speaker
There are no attacks, not while I sleep in bed, once clutching my passport, but in dreaming it is ahead. A crib, a buoy, brisking, dangling itself on the sky as waves oscillate, a swelling burden of home in forward in corners, in a moulded black handle, it falls off my bed.
01:02:13
Speaker
crashing as a brick is thrown through the window and colliding with the mantelpiece, making a hole in my stomach. I don't dream of home because someone made it to become the sea of tea leaves and oil. I make no homes of the bricks thrown at my family. They're outside, past the rubble and partition of living room window, a fist of flames collects like a bar fight.
01:02:43
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, that's that's circa. I thank you so much. The experience was incredible. I want to tell you something, too. My as I was listening to it, I had a professor. Poetry guy, brilliant poet taught me all these type of things, but
01:03:12
Speaker
We came into his class and he was talking about poetry and going through it and what it means, of course, this whole type of thing and how it sounds. And this guy was like, fuck all that noise with all this like, listen, listen first, just listen as long as you want, listen for hours, read it out loud for hours. And like, what is this guy talking about? Because our heads are going towards the figuring the thing out.
01:03:39
Speaker
I guess what I wanted to say is I did both experiences of hearing the words in that way and then pulling back out.
01:03:47
Speaker
and hearing the bumps of your voice. And it brought up, like, how do you talk about poetry? How do you talk about poetry? Because I'm moved by her and I'd be like, I think it means this, sign up. Like, maybe I'll ask another question. Like, I think maybe that's some of the discomfort. Like I was making that joke of like the guy down the street who's doing poetry, but it reflects something that's there, being like, what do we do with poetry? And like,
01:04:14
Speaker
How do we talk about it? What do you think? It is a hard question, isn't it? But I think your professor was right, just forget that and just listen to the noise because I think the poetry is meant to make
01:04:34
Speaker
noise. And it's meant to, as I said, like shift something. And whenever I talk about it, I kind of want to say to people, don't let it be sort of wallowing. Don't let it be, you know, the black and white images of Hardy or anything like that. So, and I guess
01:04:52
Speaker
When, you know, people are saying like, oh, you shouldn't ask for meaning, you know, death of the author and everything is and every what have you. But I, I don't, I don't, I don't really agree with that. I think, well, there's so much it's all about the meaning. I must say those photographs that you place in there in the in the poem.
01:05:10
Speaker
the Molotov cocktails in the color of the passport and the color, you know, like I said, when I was there, I have all that there and then a sound and I was wondering, I'm like, I've been trained in two ways to hear the things, to interpret what they mean and find universal meaning. And the other one is to hear the cadence. So they compete.
01:05:35
Speaker
you do have to find that balance, I think, of sort of attraction with voice, I think. Because, yeah, you don't want images to fall flat on their faces, and they don't, thankfully, any type of poetry performance I hear. And I never, you know, as long as you're listening, of course, that's the main thing, as long as I'm listening and the audience is listening. But I think, yeah, the picking up of the Molotov cocktails and the colour. And I think I just was so intrigued by
01:06:05
Speaker
I think law and protest, because obviously, maybe Molotov cocktails are a bit violent for just, just to say protest, but that's the... They lift the weight you need them to lift. Yeah, they definitely do. They represent, I think the Molotov cocktail just represents something not even violent, just very much defensive, the idea that it's just stacked and prepared like ammo in a way.
01:06:33
Speaker
because it is to draw on sort of protest within and what's, you know, awful is the fact that, you know, stuff like paki bashing used to occur, which is, you know, just the skinheads and punks just, you know, rounding up together and coming to just beat up, you know, Pakistani, Bengali, Indian. Yeah. So when people were protesting this,
01:06:57
Speaker
you know, the South Asian youth were the ones leading this charge. As are many, sort of, I'm really proud to say that Manchester is a city of protest more than anything else. You know, it's a huge place for Marxism, industrialisation, sure, but also welfare and, you know, general labour upkeep. And I think I was very much inspired by these exhibitions we have at the Manchester Central Library. We have a race centre, which archives
01:07:27
Speaker
a lot of protests from Black, Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities coming together. And the thing is that everyone used to be just coupled under the term Black. So even South Asians and whoever was basically making a ruckus and protesting was just considered to be Black and against skinheads.
01:07:53
Speaker
So I think I took a lot of inspiration from my hometown, sure. And this idea of, I think, transport, but static kind ofness as well, in that you are constantly held by fear and violence and
01:08:11
Speaker
constantly having to repair a home that will not allow you to call it a home, I guess. And that is the immigrant experience, I feel, especially. I can't speak to that because I was born here. So it's a lot more what my family and what my community has kind of grown up with and seen firsthand and talked about to me as well, thankfully. People are very open about it now, whereas whenever I talk to sort of poets who have immigrant
01:08:41
Speaker
parents, they say that their parents are very shameful, they're very much ashamed of talking. And I think that's a thing about poetry, you can't really have a lot of shame, because if you aren't very much on the borderline of exposure, and I guess ownership
01:08:59
Speaker
of that exposure as well. There's a very fine line, I think, where you have to be quite exposed and you have to be very open. Like I said, it is a therapy session for a lot of us, but it's very much this very exposing and bare bones, kind of like this is violence that's happening and people are prepared for it, but they're never prepared for it at the same time.
01:09:20
Speaker
saying to make people uncomfortable isn't the right word either, but it's to just, you know, bring attention. And whether that makes you uncomfortable is not the con- it's not the emotion I can control, of course. And I would much rather people be open about that to me in being like, maybe uncomfortable, but it made me think at the same time. So I've done my purpose, I've done what I had to do. But yeah, I think it was just a whole case of like, I was just contemplating
01:09:50
Speaker
how violence was just you know a constant thing that happened in the 70s 80s 90s and then it's
01:09:59
Speaker
oddly enough smoothened out now to the point where we're obviously we're very, we are multicultural, we're accepting of one another. Nothing like this occurs now, thankfully. But to think that your, your ancestors or you're just the people you know now in my day, the people I know my daily life went through and witnessed these things, you know, like, no one wants to talk about it. But I have to force them out, I have to force it out through poetic form. Yeah. Yeah, I remember talking to a very good friend of mine was
01:10:29
Speaker
Prominent in the Washington DC punk scene a while back 90s and this was a huge huge Scene and very political
01:10:43
Speaker
But I remember being amazed, my jaw agape, when he told me the true history of trying to control that scene for safety, freedom and space against skinheads in DC because there were actual jostles within the scene to make it safe for others or to lose that battle in fighting.
01:11:06
Speaker
you want to push out the fascist elements. And when he, you know, and he's an African-American guy in punk, hmm, tell me about how, you know, because I know from the outside, you're at a concert or whatever. I mean, you might not know. But the type of things you were talking about happened in US cities, right? And it seems like, oh, that was happening. And I remember reading and hearing about the reports.
01:11:36
Speaker
over by you. So just learning that there's no snapping at a fingers that made some spaces safe for others and not for others. It was a fight for some of that stuff. And that's just real, you know?
01:11:53
Speaker
Definitely, definitely. I think, yeah, anything needs to come with challenge and I'm just echoing what, you know, previously said, of course, is just art and protest and messages and whether, you know, a lot of the time, obviously, punks and, you know, having to come
01:12:12
Speaker
full sort of head, like kind of ahead of with with one another. And it takes so much out of you art in the arts, it takes so much out of you to have to be exposed and having to, you know, constantly deliver a tiring kind of message that you rehearse in your mind. But then there were, you know, you've got to think about the generations before us that were on the streets actively being like, what is going on? What is happening? And
01:12:40
Speaker
In no way shape or form could you say that the poetry scene is any more subtle or less impactful either, but it is very much a thing of like, I've seen it change people's attitudes towards
01:12:54
Speaker
specific forms of poetry, like spoken word or slam poetry, there's weirdly enough of a very weird class divide. I don't know if you've noticed, but there is definitely in the in Manchester, there's even like a geographical divide of like, certain poets from certain areas who prefer to do, you know, a lot more rap based, a lot more music based poetry. And some are very much
01:13:21
Speaker
in their sort of little notebooks, notepad, no apps and everything, just writing precise detail of, you know, emotional kind of ducks falling into, you know, deeper waters or something. And I'm like, it's brilliant, it's content, it's just beautiful. I can't say I wasn't one of them. No, hey, it's just that exercise. I gotta we gotta get at the
01:13:48
Speaker
the big strange question and for you to take a crack at it whatever way you want. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is it something rather than nothing? And it's so appropriate now that I know that you've done philosophy as well. This question is so philosophical for me. It's so unfair. It doesn't matter. I remember asking questions like, that person is fundamentally unfair.
01:14:13
Speaker
And I like that. I appreciate any sort of medium that is not being fair to me because where is the fun in it then? I think I've just bathed my whole life in academia, that's why I'm saying that. But why is it something rather than nothing? And I don't know how many people have said this, but something gives you hope at least. Nothing is just, yeah, nothing is just, as I said, I'm fearful of the void.
The Allure of Dark Academia
01:14:44
Speaker
I'm not a fan of the void. I'm not a fan of nothing. I'm very much a fan of, you know, give me the crumbs. Give me, give me, give me anything. Give me something. So I think, and anything can come from something. These are all just turning into suffixes now, really, but I love it. It's the hope. It's, I think it's just the hope.
01:15:10
Speaker
I heard that thematically. I mean, I think when I first heard it, it was always kind of like, Oh, like, but, um, I think, no, I hear that a lot because I think people take it from the, it's almost like, if you look at nothing as that absence or there being no thing, and then you're saying something, it's like, well, maybe I can't prove or show or ever, ever know, but I'm going to like, I'm going to put my chips over on the something side, you know, like I'm going to,
01:15:39
Speaker
Like I'm going to put them over that way. It's like Pascal's wager argument for the wager on God is like, well, in one wager, if you place it here, you know, you can win eternal glory. The other way, if you don't put your money over there, you got no chance. So I'm going to put it on the one with the one for the chance for eternal glory.
01:16:00
Speaker
And I love and respect that argument more than anything I think I've ever heard. That's so true. I don't know why I was immediately thinking of Achilles and
01:16:12
Speaker
hero Achilles is like, well, he's guaranteed to die anyway, bless him, but he's going for it, right? Right. He sulks. He sulks for so long. But he comes through in the end. And, you know, we don't know what I have you. That's the big review. I think you just gave sulks that he keeps. He's just awful to everyone. And then he hears petroclas is in date. And then he hears something happens. And he's like, No, gotta go now. So
01:16:39
Speaker
I think if we're looking at a very achilliard kind of. I don't know. I think we might be like end up producing here the like the typical like Iliad poetry, Manchester Industrial Revolution marks its history. What is art, Kirkner type of, you know, just like that, you know, just another one. Yeah, in fairness, there are I could recommend there is a band that I love
01:17:07
Speaker
called The Mechanisms. This is so off topic, but it is very much related to you saying it's on topic on this show. They were a cabaret band of adventuring space pirates. So they all had characters a little bit. All the band had characters and they
01:17:26
Speaker
had albums based on folklore. So the first album was on the Grimm's Brothers' Fairy Tales. So the first one was called Once Upon a Time in Space. They're space pirates. And then I think it's the second one is called Ulysses Dies at Dawn. And it's a Chicago mob, Iliad sort of mix of Greek mythology. It's insane. It's
01:17:52
Speaker
so raucous and hilarious and brilliant but you you go into the underworld you you see Prometheus like defy the gods you um you visit Ulysses Odysseus and he's like got a drinking problem and he's really upset because he can't get home I'd say listen to what I do is listen to the mechanisms they're very inspirational in that turning something
01:18:15
Speaker
from nothing seemingly nothing but something from something yeah yeah no it's a fun it's a it's a fun it's a fun play um
01:18:25
Speaker
I remembered, uh, we got just a little bit more because I don't want to forget a couple of things, but I had asked you, um, very naively about, uh, dark academia and that kind of aesthetic and what I had, what I mentioned to you and it was just, just curiosity. Um, so I had, um, you know, plunking around, I had heard.
01:18:49
Speaker
This type of music or playlist and they're a little bit about the kind of things that it invokes this kind of melancholy darkness, comforting in the darkness. I don't know how to describe it all, but, and seeing with your, uh, with your Instagram, I hadn't seen, you know, I saw that right there. So I'm like, well, I have very, such a facile understanding of it. Having just recently encountered, I wanted to ask you about that conceit of dark academia.
01:19:18
Speaker
Absolutely. I think it was, I don't want to disappoint and say it was a phase where I was like, I'm very into talking to me at the moment, but I wouldn't say it's a phase either. It is very much, it's interesting because how, you know, subcultures occurred from, you know, whatever age, I'd say whenever subcultures were occurring sociologically, mods, rockers and what have you, of course. Now, I feel as Gen Z, we kind of are very focused on
01:19:48
Speaker
Wanting to sort of represent but through fashion I think it's all kind of blended now but dark academia, madly enough, was
01:19:54
Speaker
now has been much more fashion-based and much more aesthetics-based. But if you go really deep into it, it's the Donna Tartt, the Dead Poets Society, writing in the cold with your fingers nearly freezing to death because of the snow. And yeah, as you said, Mel and Colleen, but also like sporadic urges to write something very philosophical, very poetic at three in the morning. And you need to get this idea down now. It's just
01:20:23
Speaker
chaoticness and urgency. But it's underpinned by philosophy, by education, academia, traditional, sort of classical education. And I think this is not even just about academic success, it's just about being in the throes of certain news within yourself saying, why aren't you doing, why are you researching? Why aren't you, you know, reading about this,
01:20:49
Speaker
one tablet from ancient Aztecs or whatever like ancient Mesopotamia or something like it's just the thirst for knowledge I guess and yeah it's now it's kind of transliterated into aesthetic I'd say with anything really it's a fashion choice it's a lifestyle it's not very you know
01:21:11
Speaker
healthy one to be very much, um, in the constant burnout phase, I guess is what people romanticize. Yeah. I'd imagine there's, you know, not the fetishism of some of the elements that we would see as like injurious to the self, but like, um, like seeing that vibe, is it, is it, uh, is it, is it like, is it like Thanos and the Eros? I mean, like, where's the Eros in it? Like, is it around? Yeah.
01:21:38
Speaker
It's, yeah, is it, is it this sort of like, playoffs of, um, kind of just, you know, reveling in your, in your love for knowledge? And is there, is, is it even like a thirst or is it, is it meant to be a thirst or is it just, um, you know, what I picked up on not to say not what I picked up on for me that I launched into it at the, some of the visuals that I would see would be the darkly,
01:22:05
Speaker
the darkly appealing right so if you're into books like libraries are like yeah what are the words but they're also for me have been around like being excited like intellectually but also like this um like eroticism around like curiosity and like searching and like
01:22:24
Speaker
Uh, like when people are like, Oh, like it, like, what are they doing at like eight 30? Like, you know, like in a very curious and weird way where you can go buy people in a bookstore, same type of thing, who are like.
01:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, like maybe attracted to like that Jag like what they but there's some like just noticing that type of thing and so I'm just saying it's like a curious way that I looked at it because obviously it's some probably like rooted in some You know things I'll never like
01:22:59
Speaker
leave behind a goth In the dark, like I can't leave those things behind I know part of my of my thinking but I also know Enduring in that space is not the path I'm on of entering in that space.
Zainab's Creative Journey and Final Thoughts
01:23:18
Speaker
So it's not the fetishize or Like it probably is to romanticize a romantic I don't know
01:23:26
Speaker
No, you're so right in this, yeah, it is not even, I wouldn't say obsession, it is this just manic passion, this sort of backness, you know, like kind of back and all kind of uncontrollable urge to just know a specific thing, as you said, like, yeah, you're right, like, what are people doing? When I go to like a 24-hour library, like, what are you doing with this massive weighty
01:23:54
Speaker
And like, why? Yeah. Why are you booking out this book from the 16th century that you won't get for like another two days, but you're just like constantly nail biting, waiting for it to get your hands on it? I wonder if it is this sort of intrinsic, what instinctual fear of hearing about the Library of Alexandria, like, you know, never getting to read Sappho's fragments and, you know, things, you know, so much
01:24:20
Speaker
so much information that's just lost to us. Well, the idea that you might not read a book, like you might not read a book, like that that weird idea that has no place in the head. Like I can't put that in there. Yes! Oh, that idea screws in my mind so much that I'm like, why would I care? First idea in the world, ever. It's like I totally get it, but at the same time, I'm like, I'm not gonna have time for that.
01:24:49
Speaker
people have
01:25:09
Speaker
airplane over the speed. They're ridiculous with that, honestly. Gosh, gosh. But tell folks, like, where to find you your stuff. See you if applicable. Yeah, thank you. Oh, so you can find me on aptly named Dark Akazeev Zainab. So it's Dark Period, Academia Period, Zainab.
01:25:35
Speaker
on Instagram. You can find me on my website, zanabthepoet.co.uk. Very short and simple for that one, as you can tell. And yeah, I think that those are the main sort of avenues. I'm not very, I'm very active on my Instagram. So please just drop a drop message and tell me tell me what your favourite poet is or tell me recommend some poems because I'm always
01:25:59
Speaker
wanting to read more and distract myself from my dissertation. Yeah, that's the rub, sorry. You've revealed something large within the academic world of which I must check in about. You didn't think you had a happy top here. But yes, please, please, please, if you know any aspect of working on a dissertation, please distract Zainab
01:26:25
Speaker
I would appreciate it so much. I've got about two months, so you've got a good amount of time. It's been a great chat. I think we're both excited about some of the similar interests and being able to connect in this way. I always think it's super
01:26:51
Speaker
special that it's the magic that we're able to talk and meet in this type of way and get into, I think it was 2,122 topics that we did. So if anybody needed a little bit more on those, we could parse through. Yeah, I'm down. I'm happy. I've got a laptop. I'm ready.
01:27:15
Speaker
Oh so it's uh but um yeah again uh thank you for coming on and everybody uh check out thank you thank you for having me this is such a such a delight and highlight of my year so far honestly it's been brilliant that's that's that's super in uh february from uh from the europlane across the sea so yeah oh gosh thank you so much
01:27:46
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.