A few weeks back, we had the immense pleasure of interviewing Scottish Pakistani poet, creative facilitator, multidisciplinary artist, and documentary filmmaker Sunnah Khan for our How I Write author interview series.
If you like visual aids, you can watch the video on our YT channel here, or if you prefer listing to podcasts while driving, cooking, weaving, deflea-ing your cats, or whatever the heck you do for fun, here you’ll find the audio-only version for your auditory delectation.
Sunnah’s debut poetry pamphlet I Don’t Know How to Forgive You When You Make No Apology For This Haunting was published by Rough Trade in 2020, alongside the collective offering from 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE. Her poems have been published in Poetry London, The Rialto & Maroko. In 2024 she was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Poetry Award in 2024. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection.
This was a beautifully raw conversation about finding supportive networks and building creative community, and drawing on faith and spirituality as a means of maintaining integrity in the arts. She asks the question: what is the point of the arts if you have to toe the line of the oppressor? And how can the arts be ways of uplifting the most vulnerable, and building more just worlds?
Sunnah also shares some of her poems with us as well as a poem by Haia Muohammad, a Gazan poet with whom she has been working to produce a chapbook.
UPDATE: Haia’s pamphlet has been published with Outspoken Press, with a foreword by Sunnah! Buy The Age of Olive Trees here: https://www.outspokenldn.com/shop/haia
This is how Max Porter describes Haia’s pamphlet:
“Haia Mohammed’s poems feel to me like the most important work being written in the world today. They are staggeringly impactful in their honesty, strength and beauty. The people of Gaza, as Haia says, are different; they write poems that defy death. These pieces are miracles of language and spirit, they are humanity at its best and most resilient.”
Read more about Sunnah’s work at her website, and buy her poetry book here: https://roughtradebooks.com/products/...
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