The fourth edition of Ananke’s Women In Literature Festival unveils an enticing panel on poetry. Slated to be held on the second day of the event – April 24th, 2024 – at 5.10 PM UAE and 01:10 PM GMT, distinguished panelists include: Hiba Heba, Sascha Akhtar, Shikha Malaviya and is helmed by Naima Rashid.
Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator working between Urdu, French, Punjabi and English. Her published works include Naulakhi Kothi, Defiance of the Rose, and Chicanes. She has translated works by renowned Urdu writers Perveen Shakir and Ali Akbar Natiq to critical acclaim. Her fourth book, a poetry collection, Sum of Worlds, is forthcoming from Yoda Press this year followed by her fiction. Widely published internationally, her work has been long listed for the National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. She is a member of the UK-based translation collective, Shadow Heroes. Her website is www.naimarashid.com
The panel has been envisaged and curated by Naima Rashid who commented: “Poetry is equal parts madness and method. It’s endlessly fascinating how divergent the combinations of these can be. From broad sweeping arcs of motifs that tie a collection together lightly to a razor-sharp single-minded obsessive pursuit informing a collection.”
“In this panel, we’ll look at the various processes that can inform a poetry collection and the different roles that poetry can perform. Among these are historical research, magic and self-discovery.”
“Shikha Malaviya will talk about how she inhabits the reconstructed person of Anandibai Joshi, the first Indian female doctor to travel to America. Sascha Akhtar abandons concerns of the real and journeys into the metaphysical with method-writing. Hiba Heba will discuss the interiority of her process as she describes the journey that led to the emergence of her self in a society bent on stifling it.”
Concluded Naima: “The three speakers will look at the topic from different tangents, showing us both the madness and the method to it.”
Hiba Heba, a Pushcart-nominated poet from Pakistan, currently works as an English Instructor at FAST-NUCES, Islamabad. Her poems have been published in Eunoia Review, Fragmented Voices, Aleph Review, and Poetry Wales, among others. In 2021, Hiba was the first-runner up for the New Feathers Award. Her debut poetry collection, “Birth of a Mural” (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2023), was featured in The News Sunday as one of the Best-loved Books of 2023. Find more about her at www.hibaheba.com
Talking about the panel discussion, Hiba said: “The creation of a poem has always remained a mystery, captivating both readers and, perhaps even more so, the poets who weave these verses. In Urdu, the emergence or revelation of a poem is termed “aamad”. I will explore the pivotal role “aamad” plays in shaping my poems. In my debut poetry collection, Birth of a Mural, I have embraced free verse to craft theme-driven, inspirational, emotional, and ekphrastic poetry. I have honored my native language, ensuring it stands unabashedly alongside English, allowing it to enrich the verses where it sought inclusion. I will examine these facets in-depth, elucidating how poetry transcends into a realm of almost spiritual therapeutic resonance for me.
Sascha A. Akhtar has crafted seven metaphysical poetry collections, a short story collection Of Necessity And Wanting embracing social realism and a volume comprising a biography and first time translations from Urdu of Hijab Imtiazs’ little known manuscript Adab-E-Zareen (Oxford University Press). Akhtar is a lecturer at the University of Greenwich and Poetry School tutor. She performs both locally and internationally, some highlights include the Medway Festival of Literature 2023, Emirates Festival of Literature 2022 and Poetry International, Rotterdam 2012.
“I wrote my first poem at the age of eight and always had poetry around me growing up. My grandfather was an Urdu shayar. I mention this because I would say poetry feels like a natural proposition to me. For this reason, my relationship is quite organic and intuitive. What begins as scribblings in a diary is now my craft and crafting takes a desire to share. To share the music of emotions, the depth of human experience and also to make beautiful and heal our own trauma and pain and that of others. My process is one of listening, dreaming and remembering,” opined Sascha.
Shikha Malaviya is a poet, writer & publisher. Her book of historical persona poetry, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems (HarperCollins India, 2023) is a unique retelling of the life of India’s first female medical doctor and the first Indian woman to study medicine in the United States. Shikha’s previous book of poems, Geography of Tongues, was published to acclaim in 2014. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Catamaran, PLUME, Prairie Schooner & other fine publications. Shikha has been a featured TEDx speaker and was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California, 2016. Shikha is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model literary press and is currently a Mosaic America Fellow. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family, where she is a poetry mentor, publisher, and curator.
In this panel, Shikha Malaviya will share how her book, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems straddles different genres—poetry, biography, & history and how using different forms of poetry is vital in capturing different events in a person’s life. She will also share how historical persona poetry can be an empowering way of recreating history and resurrecting women’s stories and histories in a unique, non-traditional way.
At this year’s literary festival, Ananke invites participants to share collective and individual experiences, narratives, and histories through conversations, art, and literature that grapple with the dilemmas of language, violence, and erasure.
Together at the festival, questions will be asked as to what we mean by ‘human’. With this vision in mind, AnankeWLF’s 2024 invites individuals, communities and peoples of the world to attend the digital festival to imagine change.
A collective endeavor, Ananke’s Women in Literature Festival is produced in partnership with (in alphabetical order) Ala Books and Authors, BookBot, eShe, Kitaab, Keemiya Creatives, Neem Tree Press, Readomania, Reverie Publishers, Seagull Books, Trace Magazine, Yoda Press, Zubaan Books, and Zuka Books. Ananke’s Women in Literature Foundation’s advisors include Zubaan Books’ Urvashi Butalia, Seagull Books’ Naveen Kishore, Yoda Press’s Arpita Das, Neem Tree Press’s Archna Sharma, and author, poet, translator Naima Rashid.
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