Words for the Silenced
On March 11, I sat in an audience of people spilling out of a gallery room at Regent’s University in London, listening to Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe calmly explain how the strange thing about being in one of the world’s most notorious prisons was the way you retain the good and not the worst memories: the solidarity of other women, the way they shared food, cooking, care and poetry.
Six years before, I had been part of another event organised on her behalf — a collaboration between Exiled Writers Ink, local Amnesty campaigners and the blogger Simone Theiss, where Richard Radcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, shared poems written by Nazanin and others. I remember the helpless witnessing of injustice and the ongoing fear for a stranger I never imagined I might meet — the subject of a petition signed by more than 2 million others, and countless articles and public debates. To be in a room with her, her beaming husband, and hear her clear and powerful voice was awe-inspiring. Sometimes campaigns work; sometimes people, not just poems, escape their implacable prisons.
This mix of hope and fear were part of the powerful emotions I experience as we held our third Words for the Silenced event. On this occasion, we heard poetry from writers and political prisoners in the UAE, Egypt, India, Iran and Turkey. Campaigners told stories about the lives of the writers, and read work that they had written.
The evening ended with the work of Ilhan Sami Comak. Ilhan was arrested as a 19 year old Kurdish student during a government sweep; his only crime appears to have been to be in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong ethnicity. He has been in prison for 30 years and has garnered support around the world. And readers: he has managed to write 5 books of poetry, and recently published his first collection in English, Separated by the Sun, in a beautiful translation by Caroline Stockford, who spoke on his behalf, and read us a short greeting from the poet.
Having distributed blank cards to everyone, I asked audience members to write a line or an image that grabbed them as they listened. When the reading was over each person then had a chance to write a line or two in response. The result was a beautiful mosaic, a conversation across time and space, between the poet trapped in his solitary cell, and each of us in that room, intimately linked through his words.
I took the cards home, laid them all out, and typed each one verbatim into one document. Then I started to try to find a poem. The rule I gave myself was that I was not allowed to add any new words, but I could take words away — in time honoured practice. I did many drafts, each time getting closer to what felt like a poem that reflected the voices and imaginations of all contributors.
In honour of the imprisoned poets, their network of supporters and campaigners, and of World Poetry Day, I am sharing the collective poem I wove here.
Hope and Courage: A Collective Poem for İlhan Çomak
Let us whisper. Let us speak.
Taking shelter inside each other’s thoughts.
Sing songs, throw stones.
Challenge us with beautiful truths.
The language of leaves, the sound of colours
Rustle blue tranquillity, spirit gliding in the breeze.
The fluid beauty of butterflies: Subtle
surfaces of moth wings, pen upon the wind.
Bars can never constrain feelings.
Open the window, the door. Let words spring.
I am the only one, but I am one.
Whispers of freedom combine to a roar.
Coming back to the world, this same sun
kissed bare shoulders, will kiss again tired lids.
Deep and faraway, a star is flickering.
Dear Brother, you kept faith with the world.
Look: sparrows opened the sky, took off in great numbers.
Among them the unshackled minds of poets.
Think of the river. Dream of a journey,
Shooting rapids to arrive in the broad delta.
Let us use this stick to walk in the hills.
Let us laugh. All joy will soon be yours.
Words contributed by Camilla Reeve, Cheryl Moskowitz, David Clark, Ken Jassie, Jay Lee, Omer Aksoy, Catherine Davidson, and many others.
