EDITORIAL

This issue commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and we mark this event by platforming poets located in or with connections to South Asia in conversation with other poets from around Wales, the UK and the world. We mark Partition with an awareness of its significance for all of us. The legacy of Partition is of course a very British legacy. When UK governance left India in August 1947, Cyril Radcliffe, lawyer and law lord, drew a line to equitably divide 175,000 square miles of territory and 88 million people. The separation described by Sampurna Chattarji in this issue as a “rending apart” was made along religious lines, and the result was a mass migration of millions, while communities – which before colonial intervention had lived together relatively harmoniously – broke out into terrifying sectarian violence. We know that more than a million people were killed in the process, and even more were displaced. Some of the poems in this issue deal with these tragedies, and I want to issue a content warning for some disturbing content, which nevertheless should be witnessed.

We have strong communities with South Asian heritage in Wales, and this issue is the service of those Welsh populations, but it also benefits us all. Nick Makoha in his workshop for this issue suggests that listening might be the poet’s superpower and offers methods for us to purposefully develop and nurture our powers of listening. As a magazine, we want to provide a space where writers from our community can be listened to, from our new Welsh National Poet, Hanan Issa, to brand new Welsh poet Sanjyokta ‘Yukta’ Deshmukh. I am keeping the editorial short this issue to make more room for poems, more room for listening. “The least we can do”, as Sampurna Chattarji says (again in this issue), “is to not flinch when we see what others have experienced.”

ZOË BRIGLEY THOMPSON

It’s been an honour to work on this issue, to mark the anniversary of Partition, to highlight brilliant writers with links to Pakistan, India, and South Asia and to read the breadth of inspiring work that was submitted. I’m glad to be a part of an issue that gives writers the platform to explore Partition, from stories passed down through generations to the legacy felt by communities in Wales today.

It was a difficult task to choose a selection of poems. I could have easily filled the whole magazine. My selections were the ones I couldn’t stop thinking about; their stories spilling out beyond the poem, their deep intimacy, their power. I’m reminded of why I love poetry, for its ability to forge a connection between writer and reader. I’m inspired by the explorations of identity and family in poems by Sanjyokta ‘Yukta’ Deshmukh and the interrogation of language by Nasim Rebecca Asl. For a moment, I’m in the world created by the poem and afterwards it lives on in my mind.

Elsewhere in the issue is a beautiful, personal essay by Durre Shahwar on the constraints of writing in English about Partition and an international conversation between Nasia Sarwar-Skuse and Sampurna Chattarji. I interview Hanan Issa, recently

2 POETRY WALES