There are times when it feels especially urgent to get one’s art to speak out for one’s social/ political convictions. The last few months in Delhi were certainly that kind of time as far as my response to the gender-based violence in my city, and my own growing identification as a feminist, went. So I’m honored to be this week’s Featured Poet on The Feminist Wire. Have a look at the poems below:
OK, so I now have the go-ahead to be as public about this as I want, and it’s time for you all to hear! My first book, The Fingers Remember, is being brought out by Yoda Press later this year. For those who don’t know, they are a wonderful little independent press in Delhi, and they partner with the Cambridge University Press for international distribution, so it’s the best of both worlds, and I’m honored and excited to be working with them.
And that means this is also a good moment to put in a plug for their bookstore, which is currently being shifted out of its current Hauz Khas Village location because of the steep jump in rents there over the past few years. Yodakin is one of Delhi’s gems, and it needs our support to live and thrive — if any of you are around and able, do support them by going there to buy books, attending one of these fundraisers, or generally spreading the word
Here’s more on their “Keeping the Alternative Alive” fundraiser
You enter the church, arm in arm with your father, scan the pews as you walk down the aisle. Our eyes meet briefly. You smile and mouth a silent thank you. I take a photo.
Dressed in nine yards of silk and flowers in your hair, you are more woman than I have ever seen you.
When you put on borrowed sunglasses at your wedding brunch, even though your friends say they make you look like a 60s movie gangster, you are again the girl I’ve known since we were fifteen.
The girl who not only scarfed down the sociology teacher’s tiffin everyday well before lunch break, but who also convinced said teacher to bring your favorite foods to school. The girl whose notes, big round letters, headings meticulously underlined in ruler and black ink, saw me through exams during a year when I could not write. The girl who regularly arrived two hours late for brunch and made me forgive you.
When I tell you at your sangeet that I just secured a publisher for my first book, you high five me, still-damp mehendi on both our hands. You announce my good news to a room full of strangers, and I promise to always remember these huge moments of both our lives in a happy continuum.
A decade ago, we had all laughed when you won the school special award for abundant optimism. You had laughed the loudest. But today, your cheeks glow with a love of life so deep I am forced to revisit that memory, tweak it slightly.
The first think you say to me on your wedding day: “I am the world’s most chilled out bride.”
Later, you slip the ring onto your new husband’s wrong hand, and even the priest bursts out laughing. It is the first of the many small mess-ups that make your wedding so memorable.
You ask me to hold your bouquet before you throw it to the other single women. Someone wonders if I will get lucky because I touched it before anyone had the chance to catch it.
At the reception, your new husband introduces me to an old friend: “You’re in-laws of sorts now.”
You message me from the airport as you leave for your honeymoon, telling me how you just burned your hand with hot coffee.
I tell you simply that clumsiness becomes you.
The nice folks over at Helter Skelter did another interview with me post-TFA, and I’ve been too busy (or, possibly, too lazy) to link to it. But not any longer.
Have fun 
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<opening SLIDE>
So, you know how every time you meet someone new, the first question they ask you is “what do you do?” That’s the only time I really envy people who can say engineer, stock broker, or even “I sell ball bearings.” End of that conversation, right? My answer: “how much time do you have?”
Briefly, I’m a writer — a poet. I am an educator. And I am passionately involved in peace work — specifically in youth development and education for peace.
SLIDE <Jessica’s email: What do you think the function of poetry is?>
A good friend of mine — also a poet — recently sent me this email. This is a question that has been with me for a long time — what is the function of poetry?
I’ve always loved words. Even as a kid, I loved words so much that my Mom gave me a thesaurus for my seventh birthday! But as I grew up, I also learned to doubt words. Somewhere in between working with women affected by leprosy, building rainwater harvesting tanks and ecological stoves with indigenous farmers, and working with young people who live amidst incredible levels of violence and ethnic strife… somewhere in the middle of all that, I learned to doubt poetry — learned to push poetry away and focus on more practical concerns.
But poetry kept coming back to me, and when I couldn’t push it away any longer, I decided to embrace it and make it matter. Today, I want to share what I’ve been discovering over the last 5 years about poetry and peacebuilding.
SLIDE <Lederach quote about overemphasis>
This is a quote from John Paul Lederach, one of the major scholars in the field of conflict transformation and peacebuilding. At the time of writing this, he had spent about two decades working with communities torn apart by civil war, ethnic strife, and developing lots of wonderful tools for analysis and systems for building peace. And then he turns around to say:
“We have overemphasized the technical aspects and political content [of peacebuilding] to the detriment of the art of giving birth to and keeping a process creatively alive. In so doing we have missed the core of what creates and sustains constructive social change.”
In another place, he writes:
Poets have cataract-peeled eyes. They notice things. They strip rough reality bare while giving us unexpected life… they rail against forgetting. And all of this they share with peacebuilders
So, I’ve been trying to figure this out — to make the most of the connections between poetry and peacebuilding, both as a poet and as en educator.
SLIDE Schirch’s Components of Peacebuilding>
Lisa Schirch, another important peacebuilding scholar, lays out these processes as the cycle of peacebuilding. You need all of them to build and sustain peace, and I locate myself in these two: building capacities for peace and transforming relationships… that’s where I come in, that’s where poetry comes in.
Let me just clarify here that peacebuilding shouldn’t be seen as just war and peace. We live in a world where violence — physical, psychological, sexual, structural (things like poverty and discrimination) — is an everyday experience. We’ve all experienced violence at some point, and many of us experience it on a regular basis. Violence is all around us, and peacebuilding needs to be as well.
So what can we teach our young people in the process of teaching them poetry?
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OK, now go watch the video
