Kashmir Lit

Resistance Poetry, 2018

A word from the editors / Why resistance poetry?

*Somewhere in Indian Occupied Kashmir [Image Gowhar Farooq]*

As a people living under an occupation which is camouflaged inside a democratic patina, dripping with draconian laws, there is a constant erasure of Kashmiri bodies, memories, and identities. Kashmiris are inflicted with active forgetting to ensure survival. At the frontier where the direct gaze of prose is constricted with barbed wires of multiple coercions, poetry spurts forth. Poetry makes one a witness, rather than just an archivist. One’s life-blood, all that is political and emotional; lived, remaining, and forgotten coagulates into a poem. Kashmir Lit presents the selections for 2018 resistance poetry section. Read, savor, think — Ather Zia

The role and importance of poetry in liberation struggles are crucial since the orality of verse aids mobilization of a collective response to occupation and subjugation. The orality also makes it an ideal archive of collective memory and consciousness. It represents an attempt by the populace to speak for itself rather than allow other groups to articulate their interests and perspectives. This was the guiding principle behind the call for submissions in this issue, and the selection of pieces. Each demonstrates one aspect of the subaltern’s subjectivity. We hope you will savor the poems and witness the times upon the people hidden from view — Huzaifa Pandit

‘Inventory’ by Bilal Yousuf

Ghazal for February by Ananya Pandey

‘The City’s Lament for a Messenger’ by Asad Alvi

‘When Kashmir wept, I wrote a poem’ by Premjish

The Exodus of a City by Ifsha Zehra and Samia Mehraj

Occupation by Tasim Zahid

To a half disappearance & If wishes were horses by Zabirah Fazili

The Calendar of Death by Zeeshan Ali

Pashmina, Tombstones have names & Witness by Sayen Aich

A man I know by Shivapriya Ganapathy

A Bloody Night in Pampore by Mohamad Tahir

Eid ul Fitr in Kashmir by Aaliya Mushtaq

KASHMIR- A GHAZAL by Shabir Ahmed

Two Poems by Insha Muzaffar