Genre: Poetry

October writer-in-residence Sehba Sarwar blogs about Voices of the Displaced, a workshop led by P&W-supported Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB). A writer and multidisciplinary artist, Sarwar uses her poetry, prose, and video/art installations to explore displacement and women’s issues on a domestic and global level. Her first novel, Black Wings, was published in 2004, and she is currently working on a second manuscript tentatively entitled "Island."

In the spring of 2003, I began co-facilitating a Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB) writing workshop with another Pakistani poet Shaista Parveen. At that time, VBB was still young—we were in our third year and I had recently quit working at a high school, where I had been teaching creative writing and journalism. I didn’t have much salary in those days and my only income was through workshops that VBB writers and I taught at local schools.

Though I had fun with teenagers, I wanted to work more with adults. So Shaista and I began planning a workshop that spoke to the rootless-ness we both felt, whether we were in Karachi, Houston, or somewhere else. Shaista and I dedicated much thought to our workshop title—just as VBB co-founders and I had spent time honing in on the right title for “our” organization three years earlier. We finally agreed on “Voices of the Displaced,” a title that rang true for us. It also attracted a pool of Houston-based writers who were born in other countries or elsewhere in the United States, who had come from communities of color, or identified themselves as GLBT/queer. Project Row Houses offered us a meeting space and co-sponsored the series. We sent out emails inviting people to join—VBB didn’t even have a website at that time. Our first group was intimate with only six participants, but over time, the group expanded. We always brought food and drinks and our gatherings offered formal writing but also a sense of community.

VBB’s Voices of the Displaced series lasted about two years, ending a few months before my daughter was born. But once the formal workshops ended, a group of us filled the void by forming a writing/performance group, Displaced Corps. For another year, we met weekly to write, critique each other’s work, and perform together.

Since that initial spurt of adult workshops and then subsequent break, VBB has gone back to offering writing workshops for educators and students. We also continue working on the issues we explored through Voices of the Displaced by producing theme-specific multidisciplinary shows such as Politiqueer, Artists/Mothers and What’s Color Got to Do With It?

Often I think about the title of our group and recognize that the feeling of “displacement” is true of communities not just in Houston but also in urban spaces around the world. To live in the same city as our grandparents, attend the same schools and colleges as our parents, or stay in the neighborhoods in which we were born is becoming rare. Human migration and movement makes the recording of memories and family stories precious and so much of VBB’s work continues to be focused on revisiting histories through different lenses, capturing neighborhood stories, and teaching workshops that create connections between the past, present, and the future.

Photo: Sehba Sarwar (right) with another workshop participant.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Houston is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

P&W-sponsored poet Gowri Koneswaran is also a singer and lawyer whose parents immigrated to the United States from Sri Lanka. Her advocacy has addressed animal welfare, the environment, and the rights of prisoners and the criminally accused. A Lannan Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library and member of the 2010 DC Southern Fried Slam team, she has performed at Lincoln Center Out of Doors (NYC), the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Gowri’s poetry has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon, and Lantern Review. She leads poetry and communications workshops and hosts open mics at Busboys and Poets and BloomBars, where she also serves as poetry coordinator. She tweets on-the-spot haiku at twitter.com/gowricurry.

One of the things I most enjoy about sharing poetry—through workshops, publication and performance—is the quiet power it has to open us up to diverse experiences and backgrounds. With the assistance of the Readings/Workshops program administered by Poets & Writers, I’ve twice been given the opportunity to perform my poetry in collaboration with Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company.

In Sanskrit, “dakshina” means “offering.” Beyond performing both bharata natyam and modern dance, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company offers the community events that celebrate important figures in South Asian history through other art forms.

As part of its 7th Annual Fall Festival of Indian Arts that took place in October 2010 in Washington, D.C., the company organized a joint performance to celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. I was invited to perform original poetry prior to a musical performance by accomplished sitarist Alif Laila. While we were both familiar with the dance company and founder Daniel Phoenix Singh, we forged a connection as artists through the event and particularly appreciated the ways the other’s work complemented our own.

We were both invited to reconvene for a joint performance in May 2011 in celebration of Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday. Tagore is not only a revered Bengali poet but was also the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

After each of these performances, I met a number of attendees who were incredibly moved by experiencing poetry in this way for the first time. Some had even jotted down phrases and lines that touched them most deeply.

As an artist who views my poetry as one avenue to educate, inspire thought, advocate change, and celebrate diversity, I am especially grateful to P&W's Readings/Workshops program for facilitating my participation in these events.

As Tagore wrote, "The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence." By reaching out to audiences who may not typically be exposed to the poet's craft, writers can explore the power of poetry to unite readers and listeners across varied backgrounds and experiences.

Photo: Gowri Koneswaran. Photo Credit: Les Talusan.

Support for Readings/Workshops events in Washington, D.C., is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.