The founder of Afghanistan\u2019s largest women\u2019s literary society, whose female members regularly put their lives at risk to write poetry documenting sex, rage, war and heartbreak, will be among those speaking at the International\u00a0PoetryFestival at London\u2019s Southbank Centre this summer.<\/p>\n
Kabul-based Mirman Baheer is a pioneering female literary group which enables women to share landays, short two-line poems, traditionally only performed orally, which have long been used by Afghan women as a secretive form of rebellion.<\/p>\n
Its members span professional women working in government to young girls in isolated rural villages forced to contribute in secret.<\/p>\n
The society was first\u00a0brought to the attention\u00a0of the international community by journalist and poet Eliza Griswold in 2012 \u2013 this will be the first time she and Mirman Baheer founder Sahira Sharif have spoken together about the group in the UK.<\/p>\n
They will appear as part of a festival lineup focusing on themes of war, conflict and oppression from poets and performers from across the world.<\/p>\n
Bringing the work of Mirman Baheer on to the global stage, would be \u201ctransformative\u201d, Griswold said, both for the group and for people\u2019s perceptions of Afghan women.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese poems are about war, they are about love, they are about drones, they are about American soldiers, they are about sex, they are about the size of a husband\u2019s manhood \u2013 they don\u2019t hold back,\u201d said Griswold.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey show a side of the life of Afghan women that is otherwise left hidden and no-one would ever dare to try and reveal. You could call these a protest but they are more than that because they show these women using their feminine power to shame men.\u201d<\/p>\n
While oppressive restrictions on women prevent most from being able to openly express opinions on sex and lust, on men, on their family and oppression and suffering, the landays have become powerful outlets for their emotions and anger.<\/p>\n
Those who are able, gather every week in Kabul to share the couplets, which are only 9 words and 22 syllables, while others in outlying regions call into the society in secret and repeat their landays over the phone.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the strict conservatism fostered by the Taliban, where singing is still associated with loose morals and poetry is seen as shameful, this puts the women at the risk of punishment or even death if they are discovered.<\/p>\n
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With the support of Sharif and the Mirman Baheer network, Griswold began a project to collect contemporary landays from Afghan women across the country \u2013 both to preserve them and bring their stories to the world \u2013 which have been recently published as a volume titled I am the Beggar of the World.<\/p>\n
As part of the International Poetry Festival, there will be an evening of landays, celebrating how the poems have become a new platform for resistance.<\/p>\n
Griswold said: \u201cOne of the great gifts about this poetry that it allows us to look out at the world through Afghan eyes, as much as that\u2019s possible. So we\u2019re not looking at them, we\u2019re looking at the world they choose to describe and how they see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe landays so exploded any stereotype which I had of Afghan women as mute ghosts. Having worked there for more than a decade, my assumption has always been that I understood the nature of their subjugation better than they did themselves. But that is dangerous assumption and nothing shows that to be more inaccurate than these poems.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the popularity of Mirman Baheer is growing, however, Griswold said Afghanistan\u2019s bleak and uncertain future made her concerned for the women involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy sense is that Mirman Baheer is growing even stronger,\u201d she said. \u201cBut with the withdrawal of international troops and the possible resurgence of the Taliban, the fear is that as a women\u2019s organisation they will be one of the first to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The International Poetry festival, founded by Ted Hughes in 1967, will this year host 30 poets from more than 10 countries including Iraq, Palestine, Iran and Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The line-up will also feature a group of Pashto-speaking poets from Pakistan forced to flee after Taliban militants forced them to compose poems glorifying jihad. After settling in a refugee camp, they have begun to reclaim the traditional themes of their craft, and the festival will host three of the poets, Saleem Khan, Zahid Ullah Khan and Dilawar Khan, in the UK for the first time.<\/p>\n
Southbank Centre\u2019s Artistic Director Jude Kelly said this year\u2019s line-up conformed perfectly to Hughes\u2019s founding philosophy for the festival, that poetry \u201cis a universal language of understanding in which we can all hope to meet\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are particularly privileged to welcome two groups of poets from\u00a0Afghanistanand Pakistan who share their incredible stories of adversity and highlight the enduring ability of poetry to envisage change and transcend barriers,\u201d Kelly added.<\/p>\n
I Call. You\u2019re stone<\/em> May God destroy the Taliban and end their wars.<\/em> You sold me to an old man, father<\/em> May your airplane crash and may the pilot die<\/em> Making love to an old man<\/em> When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.<\/em> Your eyes aren\u2019t eyes. They\u2019re bees.<\/em> My pains grow as my life dwindles,<\/em> I\u2019ll kiss you in the pomegranate garden. Hush!<\/em> The founder of Afghanistan\u2019s largest women\u2019s literary society, whose female members regularly put their lives at risk to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nOne day you\u2019ll look and find I\u2019m gone<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nThey\u2019ve made Afghan women into widows and whores.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nMay god destroy your home; I was your daughter<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nthat you are pouring bombs on my beloved Afghanistan.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nIs like fucking a shrivelled cornstalk black with mould<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nWhen brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nI can find no cure for their sting.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nI will die with a heart full of hope.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n
\nPeople will think there\u2019s a goat in the underbrush.<\/em><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"