 Hello, and welcome to Poetry in Protest, part of Band Books Week, which is the annual celebration of the freedom to read. Events at Band Books Week are put on by a coalition of organisations dedicated to freedom of expression, including Index on Censorship. And I'm Kate Moltby, I am the Deputy Chair of Index on Censorship, and I'm really proud to be representing us at this event. Tonight's event is a collaboration, though, between the British Library, between us at Index on Censorship, and between the Living Knowledge Network, which is itself a collaboration between national and public libraries, which brings exciting events, exhibitions and experiences to local library users across the UK. Now, poetry is frequently used as a tool in protest movements to inspire, unite and mobilise support. From Black Lives Matter and the Women's Liberation Movement to protest movements in Myanmar and Afghanistan, poetry holds the power to gather crowds during a rally or grab attention online. Poets can offer support and guidance in the most challenging, tragic or dangerous situations. And I'm particularly proud to be joined today by my Anne-Marie's British poet Coco Fett and poet and scholar Dr. Shaman Heddy for a live poetry reading and a conversation about this relationship between power, poetry and protest. What role does poetry play in protest movements? And can poetry be a form of protest in its own right? Now this is going to consist of a two Q&As separately with each of our participants and a poetry reading of selected poetry that our guests today feel is important to them. So I'm going to start with Coco Fett, and I'm going to be honest, part of the reason we're starting with him is that he is going to have to leave the event before we reach the final section. Coco started publishing poems in some of that format at the Yangon Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, and he has a long personal history of interest and engagement with political protests in Myanmar. After a brush with the authorities in the December 1996 protest, he left Burma, as it was then, led an itinerant life in Asia, Europe and North America, and moved back to Myanmar in 2017. He has published several collections of poems and translations in both Burmese and English. His poems have been translated into a dozen languages and are widely anthology, anthologised. He now lives in Norwich, UK, where of course there is a thriving poetry scene of its own. And Coco was featured in the latest edition of the index on censorship magazine, where he translated poems by two fellow writers who have been murdered during the country's bloody coup. On his website, Coco calls himself a poet by choice and Burmese by chance. Now I'm going to move shortly into a Q&A with Coco, but I just wanted to let everyone who's here know that you can ask questions yourself with the question box at the bottom of your webpage, or if you're watching on Facebook, you can put your question in the comments and they will get sent to me. Tonight's event also has automatic live captioning available. To turn these on, please click enable subtitles on the webpage. Now, after we've heard from Coco, we're going to hear from Dr. Chaman Herdi, who is an extraordinary combination of academic critic and poet herself, known for her pioneering work on issues of gender and education in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and beyond. But that's just a taste of what you're getting in a bit. I think you've heard plenty enough of me welcoming you along. And if it's okay, I'm going to move to Coco and ask him to briefly introduce himself before we start on the discussion. Thank you, Kate, for your introduction, which is almost complete and I don't know what else I can add to that personal biography of mine. Yes, I was quite active in as a student activist in Burma in the 1990s and also as a as a poet. We published illegal, you know, chip books on the canvas. So that's how I was. I like to say, poetized and politicized, politicized and politicized at the same time. So I, yeah, yeah, so this politics and poetry have been twin versions of my for a long time. So I wanted to ask to start by talking about format because of course medium and message so often go together. Just if you could tell us a bit more about that experience of, you know, putting together bundles as it were, and the kind of physical experience of passing poetry along I'm imagining I mean you have to give me, I don't have the experience that you have. I'm imagining, you know, person to person kind of relationship to poetry. So you're extending a network but there's an intimacy at each moment of the exchange. You mean us and underground poet or as a poet now. Let's go back to the chat book experience. This is the chat book experience. Yes, yes, we were, yes, deliberately trying to outdo or, you know, overcome the censorship, which was really a big deal for those who wanted to publish legally in Burma. So we just ignored the censorship regime and trying to get our own, own books out about very small scale. Of course we handed them handed the books individually, you know we to each some some students on the campus and so on, very small scale. Even the books are like, it can be hidden within another book, a bigger book. So they are small, they are like what you call pamphlets, not really chat books, usually. So yeah, these types. So you pretend you're handing an official and author and authorised book to somebody and within it there's the dissident literature behind the cover. Yes, we could just hide books anywhere, you know if there's, yeah, so that's the idea. That's the idea of the whole the other of semis debt publication. They are never big, they are, they are small in size and they are easy to be hidden. Yeah, so we just handed them out. Sorry, no, no, go on, go on. Yeah, we just handed them out, also in secret, not this. That's why I like to call it, you know, my poet, my poetic career was discreetly, discreetly launched, it was launched but it has to be discreet. So yeah, that way, yeah. And did you, did that mean that you knew everybody already had a personal relationship with everyone who was reading a poetry or did you have to trust strangers, would it be passed on then to another link in the chain and another so that there's an element of risk there. Yeah, that's a good question. We had our own network of, you know, poets and students, also even distributors who we trust it. Yeah. So we just, on different campuses we have someone representing us, they would just help us, yeah. So did you ever get caught? No, no, not really, no, never. But I was caught for another reason, for the protests, not for poetry, yeah. Yes, no, I knew that. I know that you, I know that you've had a lot of trouble because, because of protest, physical protest, but I'm just, I'm amazed by the story of the poetry that manages to say be on below the radar. Because that, to me, that, that speaks of a real trust and good faith amongst the other people that no one ever betrayed you. So I suppose the big question is why poetry? Why did you become a poet? And how is that related to the experience of having to evade the sensor, as opposed to different forms of artistic expression? Why poetry? Because I think that's the easiest, or maybe not necessarily the easiest, but that's what was available in a very, you know, in a very impoverished society like Obama, if you chose to paint or if you chose to do any other thing in art, you would have to have, you know, number of accessories like paintbrushes, paint and other things, right? But poetry, you don't even need paper and pen if you are a spoken word artist. So that's, that's I think the one of the main reasons why many people, people in, you know, in impoverished societies are really into, or even refugee camps, they are into poetry and they choose poetry as a means of expression. Yeah. And was there a spoken word tradition within your circle at the time? You've talked about chat books, but did you, is performance something that you also did for small and trusted communities? No, the performances were not really huge. No, we couldn't hold any, you know, gatherings that will be noticed. So usually the readings we made were, we were doing were really small, tightly knit community, physically of poets, and we read to one another, it's not a public event, they were never public. Well, I, that I'm fascinated by this, but I've asked all of the questions so far, which is a bit selfish of me. So I'm going to turn to the audience and really invite you to send as many of your questions as you can, but I want to start with Emma, who has asked Coco, we have all been following the situation as it unfolds in Myanmar, obviously present, obviously. How has the coup been portrayed in poetry, and have there been risks about speaking out about the situation right now? The coup has been portrayed in poetry, like a blow I blow account by, you know, different poets on every single day. I actually am compiling a book of what I call protest, a witness poetry and essays from Myanmar, basically out of 2021, you know, protests. So, every day we go see some reaction in poetic form against the coup. So there are several, several, you know, pieces of writing by poets and non-poets alike, and I imagine on the internet every day. So I, we thought, my co-editor is Brian Hammond, and we thought of preserving that in a more, you know, more durable format, which is a book and maybe an e-book as well, because these, these things on the social media, they will disappear some hour later. So that's why we are trying this. Actually, tomorrow is the deadline. So, yeah. And the book we hope to get it published by January next year. Well, in that case, I'm even more grateful that you're here with us as a very different type of writer myself. I know what it means for a writer to be the day before the deadline, sharing his time with other people. So, thank you. I wanted to go back to something that you said about the accessibility of poetry and the way that even in refugee, you use the phrase refugee camps. You were talking about a spoken word being something. So I wondered, you've talked a bit about your experience in Myanmar, but I wondered if you've had engagement with poets in other circumstances who have different refugee or dissident experiences from other parts of the world, you have communalities or collaborations you found, or what the difference is between you as a poet from Myanmar and, you know, your collaborators from elsewhere. Yes. For the current collection that we are doing, we have actually invited some Rohingya poets from the camp. Bazaar and, you know, beyond. And we have had several, several brilliant submissions. And we are very happy about that. So the difference could be that because of 2021 coup and the protests and the carnage that we have so many, you know, the central, the people from central Obama and the people from the margin like Rohingya and the kitchen people. They now have very much shared experiences. So the differences have been narrowed in the sense. Yeah. Yes. So less differences in terms of even political experiences. Yeah. So that that I that's one of the things that I want to, yeah, I noticed. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Well, Jennifer has a question that I think relates to that which is do you still write your own protest poetry, even though you live in England now now I think you've sort of in some ways already answered that because you're still responding to you're still responding to your heritage into your history but I think we'd all like to hear sort of how your poetry has changed over the years and how it has changed with you settling here. Yes, I like to distinguish between protest poetry and witness poetry, protest poetry to me implies, you know, implies a political agenda, a collective, a group think and witness poetry is more or less subjective. And me think and not, not always having political agenda, not that I opposed, you know, to protest poetry, but in the sense I think witness poetry is more inclusive term that also includes protest poetry. So yes, I keep writing poetry, I call it witness poetry rather than protest poetry because I, I don't have any political agenda. And I think I write for myself, not not for any organization or any, yeah, any individual. That makes sense. That's great to hear. I know we're going to hear from you in a minute, not just your own poetry but reading some poetry that speaks to you. But I wondered if there were people you recommended that we should go and read who you felt had particularly inspired you or in whose tradition you feel you're working, whether it's protest poetry or witness poetry. Yes, so many Burmese poets to, you know, to speak of and I'm going to read some of the poems by some of the poets that Burmese poets who inspired me most and I translated for this collection. So you will hear them. But yes, several of them. In terms of protest poetry and in terms of living, you know, their lives for poetry, I think both Cathy and Gays are when both of them were killed, you know, for their dissent. They really inspired me for, you know, being very true to their own, you know, own word and own poetry and own belief, I would say. Yeah. Yeah, I call them my, my said captains after a poem by, by a British poet. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Gunn, a poem by Tom Gunn. Yeah. I call them my said captains. Yeah. Okay, I should, I should go and look it up. Yeah, it's a very good one. Okay, well, thank you for sharing that with us. Martin has asked, do you find there is a lack of political urgency or commitment in the British poetry scene. And he's even asked, does it all seem rather sedate in Norwich? Yes, it does all seem rather sedate, but it'll be more sedate in Finland or elsewhere. So I wouldn't complain. I mean, people are, you know, the, the, the, even myself, we, we are all paying attention to what was, you know, near and dear to us. We have our own, our own concerns and daily, you know, we can be worried about everything every single minute or we, our, our living will be hell. Right. So I can, I used to think of the way people are so sedate and different and so on. But now I don't. I think, yeah. Well, yeah. That's the nature. I would say, yeah. And Norwich does have a thriving poetry scene, doesn't it. Yes, yes. Yes. And we have a National Writing Center. Yeah. National Center for Writing. Yeah. Luke asks, what came first, protesting or writing poetry? Writing is, I mean, as a poet, when you are in descent of protest, writing is a form of protest. So they are, you know, always together, writing as a form of protest. But what came first, I think writing, for me personally, I think, I think writing came first because I was writing kind of on a slide, right, writing on the slide. Writing, my writing, I don't want to really, I don't want the authorities to know that I, and so on. But what came first, I think awareness about freedom and writing came first before, I think, the real protest began, I would say, for me personally, yeah. Yes, I was wondering if there was a literary tradition in your own family. No, not in my relatives or families, immediate relatives. So yeah, no. So you're the first. Yeah. Yes, always disruptive to be the poet in a family. I think we have one last question, which is a response to the course to the overall theme, how vital is freedom of expression in our literature. And importantly, do you believe that our freedom of expression in literature is becoming more limited? It's a question worth a million, million pounds. What shall I say? Freedom of expression is everything, okay, but that is, that is, that is obvious. But how limited it has become in the current global setting. I think we are in a paradox where, you know, on social media, we are free and we could say anything we want or so on. But then again, that I think there are limits to what we can say again, or, you know, in some societies, even on social media, you know, and so on. So I cannot put it more sophisticated than that, but I think that this wall is now a paradox where on one hand there is freedom of expression and so on. But on the other hand, there's limit to what we can do, what we can say, even self censorship and so on. Yeah, and yeah, so I have to think it, you know, think it, think it really hard to come to terms with this question, I would say. I'm sorry, I cannot really answer that. Yes, I appreciate it's a very, very broad. I was aware when I passed it on, it's a very broad question, but central to what we're talking about today. I'm also aware that we have bombarded you with questions for quite a long time now, and I'm very grateful to you for answering so fully. But I think it's time to move on to the poetry reading section of this and give you a little rest from thinking on your feet but we're all very much looking forward to hearing you recite. My understanding is that you're going to start with a poem by a colleague, Residual Lives by Mi Chang Wai, but after that I will leave you to introduce any further poems that you feel you have time to share with us yourself. Yes. Mi Chang Wai, she was born in 1953 in Lua, Burma, you know, she is a one poet, she is actually known for short stories, usually a poet, but this poem is about women in protest in Burma, and it's called Residual Lives. Or literally it could be the lives that remain. Mi Chang Wai, Residual Lives. Calm night in city arrives with a pair of keeping eyes through bamboo mesh walls, baby crying, or those family voices are gone. Between the dome of the plant and roof of our homes, only the crows call over and over again, moles, fingers, snitches, the land. Words that are news to me. Four has no label written on his forehead, but he is close, very close. In the depth of the night, when all lies are out, everyone must hold their breath. First the footsteps of the army boots, then the orders. Two from this house, three from that house. Put them down, beat them up. Rabid dogs snitch our neighbors. The dillan, a finger whose mure flash is infested with maggots, is there to help. A bullet out of the darkness is blind and will hit a random target. It will destroy everything on its path. At a corner of this wall, a most violent plot unfolds out of a tragic opera. Comes the next morning, a group of remaining women from the neighborhood takes to the streets to witness the truth. Their mouths will speak up, their hands will stretch. They will pawn their own lives for their husbands and sons who have fallen on that blastained asphalt road. By 8pm, with their residual voices, they will bang pots and pans in protest until they hear the footsteps and the finger again. Thus residual lives by Michangui is about a township at the outskirts of Yango, where on the 14th of March alone, they were killed in the protests. Okay, next I'm going to read a poem called Flying Thaya that I just translated. This poem is again about this township where, you know, the people began to fight back in self-defense because there was so much blushing. Flying Thaya written by Tissani. Flying Thaya up against the metropolitan Yangon. Flying Thaya is wilderness for a poetical dozens. This is where the Ayawari Delta hobos, who didn't witness the world wars but pushed through this cyclone, and the Anya Mongols, who left their funds for factories. Myanmar's New England doesn't reek of butter. They don't need a five-star hotel here. There's Miigwe wet market for vegetables. The place is as plain as instant tea without cream. The Julian husk is known for spikes. The township is known for hooligans. At times, it will wash its misdeeds down in labor protests. Among the Flying Thaya's special menu are slums and sweat beads, meagre mills and moonshine stench, factory smoke and malleys. Those squeamish about mud wouldn't suffer there. And yet Angel Lala Jolie has been there. Aung San Suu Kyi has been there. In the spring revolution, women of this town get obscenes at the senior general. Men, brandish sticks and dars, children and grown-ups come together. Repress us, we'll rise again, touch us, we'll strike back. The curtain to the first defensive war is lifted. The ideology of the people who haven't got their nose into surplus value theory is we have nothing to lose isn't. They spit it out like quid beetle. Had only a superior power had to prevail, David would have never beaten Goliath. A revolution without a precarriage is a wingless bird. A poster reads, if I'm cut down, the man behind me will cut you down. Black flags have been raised on the side of righteousness. In this sept spring of endless legends, they will thrive like a flower of forests. Death is no stranger. If you dare not fall, you are no flower. Do I have time for another piece? It's up to you. Then I will, I think, finish with a poem about my poor friend Cathy, which I read for an event recently and it is also on YouTube for Requiem for Justice event. And this poem I wrote for Cathy, a Burmese poet who was killed on the 8th of May. He was arrested on the, he was arrested in the evening, in the afternoon of the 8th of May. And then his body was returned in the morning of the 9th of May. So he died within the 24 hours of arrest. And the poem is called, the day Cathy was tortured to death. And this poem is inspired by a song by Lou Reed, which is called, the day the president was assassinated about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But this is my own and this is called, the day Cathy was tortured to death. The day Cathy was tortured to death. I dreamed. I was the poet laureate of Nebido. I dreamed of being a board of generals. The generalist, Generalismo was a poet too. So was the Generalismo's American coca spaniel. But I just wanted to properly pay tribute to him at the end of that section to say how grateful I was that he was able to join us. I know people, when people who live relatively privileged lives in Western countries say that we are humbled to listen to other people's poetry and experiences of dissent and exile and protest that it often feels inadequate to the task but that is how one feels I think listening to other people's, I mean, not just his witness but his words. And I will just remind everybody that Coco is featured in the latest edition of index on censorship magazine and I believe if you want to see those poems again, two of them are featured in the magazine where he's featured. I also would say that he is the co editor and translator of the pen award winning poetry anthology bones will crow 15 contemporary Burmese poets so if you want to learn more that is somewhere I would start I would go to bones will crow 15 contemporary Burmese poets. Okay, well, again, sorry about that. Hello to Dr Chobhan have the, and thank you, Dr have the feel patients as well, waiting in the wings in the first section. Dr have the is one of these people who so accomplished one doesn't quite know where to start with the bio. She is the author of critically acclaimed books across the fields of poetry, academia and translation. She's an educator person scholar known for pioneering work on issues of gender and education in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and beyond. After 26 years of exile, she returned home in 2014 to teach English and to initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq Salamani, where she also served as the English department chair in 2015 to 2016. So those of us who have any experience of setting up leading or watching other people lead academic departments in this country can just imagine the energy and organization that was required to do that at the American University of Iraq in the circumstances. The 2010 poems from her first English collection, Life for Ups has been studied by secondary school students in the UK as part of their English curriculum. Her second collection, considering the women 2015 was given a recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the forward prize for best collection, and her translation of a Sherco beckers butterfly valley in 2015, won a pen translates award. And I mean I can go on. She studied Oxford London and Kent universities. She was awarded a postdoctoral scholarship from the Lebergum Trust, which is in itself an amazing achievement those are brilliant awards. Okay, Dr. Herdy, let's actually hear from you and not from me. And I wanted to start just by asking you, listening to that conversation with Coco that there was anything that really jumped out of you that you felt you wanted to respond to. I agree with Coco that poetry of witness is more encompassing that poetry of resistance because many of us, even though we may be not central in the resistance we are witnessing the resistance we are holding and supporting the resistance with our words. And I very much liked the way he described his, his journey from homeland and also to becoming a refugee poets and and settling in Norwich and the difficulties of, you know, these reconciling these very two different worlds and finding your way as a poet in a new land. Obviously, I, I was in a similar situation when I came to London in 93 I was in my late teens. And I was writing in my mother tongue then I started writing in English much later. And at the time we were, I mean, I feel for Coco ending up in Norwich because I was in London which is much more multicultural. And we were still struggling. And there were a group of us, refugee and immigrant writers who had not been translated, who are struggling with cultural and linguistic barriers. And I am to this day and forever grateful to Jennifer Langer, an English second language teacher who sort of went around the different communities trying to put together an anthology of refugee writers so she can teach those poems to her students. And she thought they would learn English better if they were reading poetry from their own country. And as a result of that anthology sees she established exiled writers Inc. And I was the first chair of that organization she was and still is the director of that organization which actually became a platform for many refugee writers. Now we had readings in the poetry cafe the first Monday of every month. And as a result of that many British. Sometimes, first, they were humanitarian workers or social workers who are interested in our work. Gradually, literary literature lovers and poets also turned up and through there we got invited to, you know, other conferences and readings and some of us who still wrote in our mother tongues were translated into English and so on. I identify with all of that and I see how difficult it is. But also the possibilities that there are wherever you're based, starting in a new land where you can speak loudly about all the issues that were suppressed at some moment in time. Yes. And I wouldn't dream of disputing with the London is more multicultural, the Norwich. And that that offers possibilities but one of the things I found interesting listening to Coco is very selfishly from my own, my own minor academic research is on Elizabethan literature and one of the things that's really important about Norwich back in I mean in 1578 when Elizabeth first goes to visit it. It is the center for the refugee community of Huguenot's mainly Dutch and French Protestants and it's everyone talks about it everyone knows that Norwich is where is is is a multi lingual place and it's a multi religious place and there's a lot of tension and not everyone is happy with it. But some of these, you know, some of these waves of exile and asylum and the politics that comes with it. They go back further in this country than we sometimes than we sometimes like to talk about. It's a fantastic poets in Norwich, you know, home to George 30s Monizah al we Helen ivory and many others and the creative right to program. It is a fantastic place to be. But I still think London is a bit more easier for I mean I think you'll find many community in London, when I was doing my research about refugee women and I was comparing London with how, because it was a new new city where after the dispersal and the government was sending refugees there, and there were no translators no community centers no, no supports in a way and that was a much bigger struggle but you're right I mean historically many of these places especially ports and borderlines were much more open and diverse than they have become. And I suppose, so you came to London as a teenager with your with your family. Did you start writing poetry as a teenager and did you, did you write it in a range of languages even then. I had started writing already short stories, and I thought I will become a short story writer or a novelist I have always been toying with novel writing I have written a novel which I've never managed to publish it. So a poetry happened to me when I was in London. I think I started toying with the idea when I was in Iran. And I read a lot of Persian literature and Persian poetry modern poetry which resonated with me, because Kurdish poetry, a lot of classical Kurdish poetry is very grand by very famous men. It's patriotic, it's serious or it's romance. And it wasn't about daily experiences it wasn't about the things that mattered to me so I think reading in Persian gave me that window of poetry could be about the things that mattered to me as well. So I started writing things that were between poems and stories in my late teens and started seriously writing poetry in my early 20s. Yes, and you're also the seventh and youngest child of another poet, Ahmed Heddy, and I mean I imagine people are probably always bored of being asked about their famous relatives when they're here to talk about their own poetry but how did sort of coming from a literary family and the sort of inevitable tension between kind of legacy and rebellion relate to the experience of being a you know an exiled poet, a poet who is working out your relationship with your history and your heritage as well as your relationship with your parents if I can ask something so broad and so personal. Sure, I mean I it's very interesting because lots of people say oh dad famous poet and so on but it's all these things are quite relative so when we came to England when it came to London my father became a refugee man and his father who didn't speak English nobody knew him, he became he lost all his status social status and struggled a lot with depression and loneliness, because he was considered one of the treasures, you know, by many people and still is and and suddenly he was just, he felt that he had become a nobody in exile. It's very difficult sort of dealing with that kind of contradictory situation why in one community. You know, you know, because many of his poems had been turned into very classic songs, and everybody knows them. Everybody knows the lines from these songs. So it was completely different but for me, I mean, my father was like, he was very much. He brought classical poetry, and he struggled understanding modern poetry, and my first in Kurdish collection was published in 1996 in Kurdish by a small diaspora publisher in Denmark, and it was, you know, it was free verse. You know, Raim and Mita and so on. And I had quoted a Persian poem which had Raim and Mita, which I love. And he read the whole book and he said to me, the only poem in this book is that Persian poem because the Elvis he didn't consider to be poetry. Whenever I tell people this, they think it must have been traumatic, but no, to be honest, I, that was my dad, and that's how his honesty and I knew that that wasn't his type of thing and I never was hurt by it. But that's how it was so we were always struggling with what poetry is, you know, he was like, Oh, you, what, what is this what you just put sentences together and you have an image here and then you think this is a poem. So we had completely different understandings of poetry but of course, the fact that we had a lot of tree and a lot of books in the house was an important factor in my life, the fact that he recited a lot of poetry by heart. He was very he had a fantastic memory he'd memorized many versus hundreds of them. And the fact that he always had a poem relevant to whatever situation we were in and he would just come up with them. So all of these things made poetry very accessible and made rhythm part of our lives he was a very good storyteller. And I think that was probably another thing that really helped develop my imagination and my first for words and, and for stories. So he had this habit of cutting, cutting a long story into small bits and every night he would read me or he would, you know, tell me a piece of it and keep me waiting until the next night. Things are important. I think we are a combination of many things on we I mean, environment, socialization or on efforts, maybe a bit of genetics, all of these factors play a role. But I have to confess one more thing I always loved sciences and at some stage in life I was, I was thinking about studying sciences rather than philosophy, physics and math I love them but a doctor and when she went to study medicine she had won a gold medal for a short story competition in Iran she wrote in Persian. But then when she studied medicine she had no time left for this and she always said to me do not study sciences if you want to continue writing and I, I took her advice and I went more into words because I think that would have taken to completely another track. So while we're talking about your particular particular relationship with language and your poetry. I have a question from Emma, I, who says, I was deeply moved by your poem dispute over mass grave. Can you talk a bit about the process of writing the poem and the story behind that person specifically. This comes out of this is one poem in a sequence called the unfile. The unfile was a genocide campaign by the bath government in Iraq against the Kurdish village population. It took place between February and September 1988. So what I did after finishing my PhD I did, I got a scholarship from believer human trust and I came home, did a lot of field work of visiting the areas because they're six geographical areas on the borders of Iran and Turkey. That were sort of destroyed during the campaign and many people on these villages ended up in mass graves. They were more than 200 gas attacks on this area and so on. There were deportations, prisons, separation of men from women and elderly from young so I, I, for my postdoc research I studied or I wanted to understand women's experiences of the genocide campaign because at the time there were many documentaries on the Kurdish satellite channels and many questions I had about what women were experienced in their own bodies, you know, being in prison being without demand sexual harassment and so on. We're not really answered in these documentaries so I came back in search of answers for my own questions. And while I was doing a lot of field work I would spend stretches of time in Kurdistan and villages here and there from the border of Turkey to the border of Iran. These, you know, I mean they were very traumatic survival stories and I, every time they cried I cried and every story in a way became its own nightmare. I was doing okay when I was doing the field work in a way but when I came back to Europe and had to sit down and listen to the stories and sort of analyze them it became extremely traumatic and I felt very sick and I was unable to do much for about a year but so while while I was collecting the data the voices of these women were so strong and sometimes sentences they said were like, you know, they already sounded like a line from a poem. So, I thought about this for a long time writing a sequence of poem in their own voices, enwrapped by my voice as the researcher and that's what the sequence does. So the researcher comes in the first poem, very naive and matter of fact and thinking she knows it all and asked the survivors to speak and each survivor tells their own story, 11 of them. And at the end, the researcher comes in again completely traumatized and devastated and poisoned by this knowledge so that poem is one of the poems the story of some of those women who were continuously looking for closure, because they kept saying that if you have a bare body you bury and you can be sure and you can grief and move on but when you don't have a body when the body of your loved one is it buried with hundreds of others in a desert. You keep hoping that they may have survived and when there were opportunities of uncovering mass graves there was always a lot of that's my relative or is it your relative. Because unfortunately it's too expensive to do DNA testing. So uncovering graves meant that they would just bring back loads of people and they know this lot from that region, but nobody would get their own relative back they wouldn't know who it was exactly and there were no ideas on them, many of them. So that story is about two, two women that poem, two women arguing over the, the remains of 14 year old son, each of them wants it to be her son because each of them wants closure and wants to bury their son. And one of them says no, you know, she's telling she's not it's it's this disagreement about the remains of a loved one. So the first judgment of Solomon is what I'm, it's making me think of. Now, we have a lot of questions or I'm a plus one year. We have a lot of questions for you which I think is testament to the number of your admirers who we have with us. But we also are running out of time. So I'm going to ask a couple of questions at once, and then we're going to move on to the poetry reading. Claire asks, and I think this is a key question, is poetry really an effective protest tool. Have you seen poetry make a difference to people's lives. And I think, combined with that, if I could also just put you Manny's question, as a poet who has a passion for social justice, how do you balance your need to fight for rights and the necessity to make a living. I think it makes a huge difference. And I'm not saying that simply because I'm a poet. I know that in communities like mine, where there has been successive traumas and one after the other. There's a tendency to become numb to events. And people are it's just in a way it's a survival strategy or brain sort of protects you from feeling all the horrible stuff. But when it becomes a permanent trait and sometimes that happens, a survival mechanism becomes part of who you are. It's quite tragic because it means that people end up actually not feeling. And when they don't feel that they don't react. They don't resist. They don't fight back. And I think poetry is wonderful in making you feel that sadness that you should feel. It's wonderful in making you feel that outrage that you should feel in order to take action, simply because that apathy and numbness and getting on with your own life does not change anything. So in my own perspective, and I've seen this happen. I've seen poetry being read by myself or others and people starting to cry, and people saying, you know, I try to avoid thinking about that but tonight I had no choice. I think it's very important sometimes not to have the choice and to think about that sadness and to contain it and to maybe that will be the energy to push you to do something. What was the second question. Well, to be honest, looking at the time I think that's the perfect moment for us to ask you to move into your own poetry reading. I don't need you to introduce that once you've settled yourself down at the right spot, but we've only got about five minutes left. So I will leave it in your hands. Super. I mean, I wanted to read a lot of poems but I don't think I have time. Maybe I'll read just one poem from the unfile sequence that you mentioned. Because this poem is called the angry survivor. And I think that's one thing that we don't realize we keep saying to ourselves and to others as researchers and writers and poets that we try to amplify other people's voices. There are other people that we're trying to speak to they say that they feel they don't want to speak to us because they feel that their stories are being used, they're repeatedly used for their story and their situation does not change. So this poem is about a survivor that I met when I was doing my postdoc research about and file, and she nearly kicked me out of her house and rightly so. I ended up with my with documentations of my grief. Journalists asking me to sing a lullaby for my dead children to broadcast during call memorations government officials using my story as propaganda during elections. Women activists forcing me to talk about rape, only to prove that women are oppressed. They're just claiming to record history, when all they do is pick my wounds. This is my story, not yours. Long after you turn off your recorder, I stay indoors and weep. Why don't people understand, I'm neither hero nor God cannot cannot stand the talk of forgiveness. For years, I went to every wake wept at every man's funeral kept asking why then realized I will never understand. I just endure the days by planting cucumbers, which you interrupted by believing in another world where there will be justice by watching my remaining children as they sleep. Let me your despair and understanding. You don't, you can't resurrect the debt, feed my hungry children, bring me respect. Take history with you and go. Don't come here again. I just don't want to know. I want to end with a uplifting poem because I think it's important to remember that poetry yes can give voice to a lot of grief and a lot of sadness that sometimes we shy away from or shut away because we cannot process it we cannot handle it. Poetry can also be very mischievous and it can laugh at those in power. So I'm going to read this poem called the seventh wedding invitation. And it's in Kurdish we have the same if a little girl is, you know, if she's clever or funny or she's cheeky they say to her you will marry seven times. This is supposed to be a curse because it's supposed to mean that no man will put up with you you're so you're going to be so difficult. And it's supposed to be a failure on your behalf and I, I just wanted to sort of turn this around this idea of bad woman reclaim it and celebrate it because in my view, if you manage to convince seven people to marry you you must be special. So this is the seventh wedding invitation. Dear friends and family, I promise this will be my last wedding. If it doesn't work out I'll just live with another man no more pledges. So please come along to this final ceremony with a man who at the moment fills my eyes. Do not bring any more presents please. As nonstick pan is still in the box. Mama hammers gold ring has not been put on, and the naughty laundry will be worn for this man. Since my ex was orthodox, he didn't last long. Do come along. I promise to wear something more sophisticated than a wedding dress. I have no chance to meet and talk about I'm as failure in bringing up her children to shed light one more time when they last divorce and Nina's remarriage to her brother in law. We will have a fun night. I have told my new man so much about you. And it may be your last chance to meet him with all my love, your little Lana. And I think I do I have come for a tiny, tiny time for a tiny poem. If it's last on a minute or two minutes. Yeah, it's a very short one called his boots. And I wrote this one for the same went into hiding after he was after the bath government fell. And I just wanted to sort of imagine this dictator changing to an old man on the run. He will always keep those boots on the day when things were ending. She was leaning on her stick in disbelief when a car with black windows slowed down. She watched the back window open fast. And there he was, the dictator, suddenly looking old and frail, dropping his military boots and replacing them with old men's shoes. Then the window closed and the car took off, leaving dust on the pair of boots, still warm and moist from his feet. I tried to humanize him a little bit that he was sweating. Well isn't that part of the point of poetry. And that was deeply moving and beautiful, and I will be going away and reading more. I am sorry that we didn't get to ask everybody's questions which like I say I think only testifies the popularity of the event. And we are running out of time and because this is a zoom, I think the whole, the whole screen will close any minute now so they just wanted to say a big thank you to you. Dr Tramann Hardy again. And thank you in absentia to Coco that to obviously left us quite abruptly. We really appreciate everyone being here. Please let us know audience please let us know what you thought of the event with the feedback button. You can donate to the work of the British Library and the living knowledge network on the British Library website. There's the things I have to say. But really, thank you to everybody again, and I shall be hearing those words I think from your reading echoing, particularly the image of a dictator and his boots for some time in my head to come. So, thank you very much. Thank you and have a good evening.