‘I came of age to an industry completely decimated by digital disruption so every job I have in the media I assume is going to be my last.’
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‘When you do community art, a question that is simple to ask but hard to answer is: how much actual power are you giving to community?’
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‘To painstakingly pencil, ink and shade my memories made them feel more real and valid.’
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‘ …the art world speaks of progressiveness and equality, but in practice, is a brutal and unforgiving place for parents and carers, particularly women.’
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‘…our government systematically incarcerates and tortures the most vulnerable humans in the world and keeps it secret, and the music you make is not separate from that.’
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‘My biggest fear as both a writer and an editor are that good ideas die when there’s no one to see value in their earliest articulations, or defend them.’
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‘We are living in the Age of the Immigrant, the Refugee and the Nationless Wanderer for whom poetry seems like the only home.’
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I’m interested in communitas, intimacy and conversation - and what better vehicle for all that than being around a table full of food, and being given the simple task to savour the meal?
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‘Art is best created when we shift our own paradigmatic interpretations.’
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The larger part of the work is empathy. How can I put myself in somebody else’s shoes as much as possible?
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‘I learned to use humour as a literary tool to disarm and engage an audience…’
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‘Our compulsion to tie our sense of belonging to something concrete is linked to our innate desire to be accepted or to be perceived in a certain way.’
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‘It’s an ongoing question for me: how do you explore racism without perpetuating it?’
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‘Carving out time to attend and facilitate discussions about books, to float in the realm of ideas, is like oxygen.’
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‘I think our other task as writers is to understand, and treat seriously, the feedback loop of stories and reality.’
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‘There was a time when I wondered if opening my heart to other places made me less Pakistani. If writing poetry in English, and not Urdu, made me less authentic. But over time, something has changed.’
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‘Living as a minority in two multicultural societies has brought challenges, but not adversity.’
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I suppose writing every day meant I was always giving myself the space to show up on the page, rather than in person.
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‘I’m sick of looking to international TV shows and podcasts to see and hear myself.’
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‘At the start, it’s hard to know what rejections mean. Is your writing shit, or does the editor just not understand your work? Persist and stay true to your vision.’
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