An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Alycia Pirmohamed (Junior Anniversary Fellow 2021-22, University of Liverpool)
Radical landscape poetry by women and nonbinary writers of colour
This work-in-progress talk is twofold. It will include an overview of my IASH supported project, Our Time is A Garden, a nature writing workshop series for women and nonbinary writers of colour based in Scotland; and an analysis of radical landscape poetry by British South Asian writer, Bhanu Kapil. In the essay ‘Lyric Violence, the Nomadic Subject and the Fourth Space,’ Sandeep Parmar asks, how do poets of colour ‘differently embody the ‘I?’’ This question challenges the coded whiteness of the lyric subject, and thus, calls into question the whiteness of lyric traditions such as Romantic and landscape poetry. Actively engaging with Parmar’s question, this talk examines Bhanu Kapil’s cross-genre collection, Ban en Banlieue, which is set on the Hayes/Southall border in April 1979 during the Southall race riot. The narrative begins with a brown girl who lies down in the middle of the street, amongst the dark green ivy and in the rain, during the early hours of the riot. Sara Ahmed’s conceptualisation of ‘skin memories' provides a framework with which to explore Kapil’s embodiment of the lyric ‘I’ through her character Ban, and how poets of colour with histories of migration represent real and imagined histories through figurations of the natural world.
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81322391722
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2