about

about the project

"Tears are streaming down my face,
I cannot forget Kabul's snow-topped mountains"[1]

Radical Whispers is a collaborative project between Maslaha and Poet in The City to provide a UK platform for Afghan women's poetry.

Bringing together international partners, the project will showcase how poetry is used by women in Afghanistan as a tool to influence change, and harness the power of this message to explore identity and freedom of speech in the UK and globally.

Female poets in Afghanistan draw on a long tradition of women’s spoken word poetry in the region using an ancient form ‘landai,’ a satirical couplet, as a means of female resistance and solidarity in the face of limited freedom of expression. Read more about the history of the landai here.

Female poets look to poetry in a constant struggle to speak openly about life and their existence.

Poets range from professional women writing under pseudonyms to young girls in local villages, united by their common choice to channel anger, passion and humour through poetry as a means of survival.

Through a global communications campaign and in-depth community engagement work in London beginning in 2017, this project will seek to draw and learn from this powerful form of resistance, introducing the use of the ‘landai’ form as a space for dissent and empowerment, and the work and philosophy of Afghan women poets, to UK audiences.

We are currently in the research and development phase of the project and building a committed network of artistic, delivery, marketing and funding partners - if you would be interested in joining our journey in any way, get in touch here.

the big questions

Some of the pressing questions we will explore through this initiative are:

Why aren’t we hearing certain voices?
How can we find power in ‘vulnerability’?
How can we use poetry as a unique space for engagement and expression?
How can we find new language to contrast negative misconceptions? What can we learn from the use of poetry as resistance in Afghanistan?
What would you say if you could say anything?

what does the project involve?

Public events - Poet in the City and Maslaha will curate a number of public events celebrating work produced through the project and exploring issues around identity, self expression and belonging through the lens of landai poetry and the art of translation. The first event will be a celebration of the role of poetry in narrating personal journeys across the globe in the bustling transport hub of St Pancras International station, London, on National Poetry Day 2016. Read more about the event here.

Education programme - starting in Spring 2017 Maslaha will deliver a series of immersive education workshops with young people in schools and older women in community groups across four London boroughs. These workshops will showcase landai poetry and explore what Afghan womens’ use of poetry as a source of resistance and solidarity, has to teach us.

Commissioning/Publishing - we will be collaborating with partners including Kabul based literary group, Mirman Baheer, to identify and publish new poetry from women in Afghanistan. UK poets will also be commissioned to write poetry on the subject and create engagement at a local level. This work will be showcased in an online exhibition and a poetry publication.

Online exhibition - all of the project outputs will be curated as part of an interactive online exhibition designed to reach international audiences and ensure the impact of the project is widely felt. This will include poetry, photos, illustrations, podcasts and clips of poetry being recited. Importantly, the online exhibition is intended to start an on-going dialogue about issues around identity, stereotyping, Islam and feminism that will be accessible and open to contributions in multiple ways.

Podcasts - given the aural tradition of women’s poetry groups in Afghanistan we are keen to recognize this in the work we do and would like to use podcasts as a way for participants to take part in the project, and to reach new audiences. Many communities that Maslaha work with, for example Somali and Bangladeshi, have strong aural poetry traditions that are not recognised in the UK. Shedding light on these traditions is important to open up new language that will better resonate with diverse communities, particularly when exploring identity or taboo issues. With Muslim communities increasingly feeling marginalised and disenfranchised in the UK, we believe this is a need for new voices and narratives within Muslim communities and that poetry plays an important role in this.

A large-scale campaign through which project partners will create a ‘global moment’ celebrating voice and humanity through the landai form. This will help to change how issues around gender, race and religion are debated in wider society and media outlets.

why are we doing this?

To challenge stereotypes of Afghan women as submissive and in need of liberation – and provide a platform for them, and other frequently to speak on their own terms.
Muslim women in the UK face complex discrimination on the basis of both faith and gender; as well as facing strong social inequalities.[2] Providing a platform for the voices of Muslim women of all ages to be heard on their own terms, will challenge commonly held negative stereotypes of Muslim women that impact aspirations of Muslim girls and can provide barriers to access to employment and education.
To encourage action and develop critical thinking skills and spaces for dissent through poetry.
To highlight and encourage further engagement with poetry as a means of communication and of having a voice.
Being able to discuss issues such as identity, belonging, intergenerational conflict, and prejudice, will support young people to develop a more nuanced understanding, empathy and critical reflection skills.
To increase cultural competency in teaching and curriculum and integrate learning styles and methods that resonate with young people of all backgrounds.
To showcase new poetry to global audiences.

[1] 'Songs of Love and War' Edited by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, translated by Marjolijn De Jager (1994)
[2] Muslim women are 70% less likely to be employed than their white Christian counterparts

current in-principle partners include

- Mirman Baheer
- SOAS University
- Global Fund for Women
- Free Word Centre
- BAAG

- Embassy of Afghanistan
- Amnesty UK
- Hogan Lovells
- Aga Khan University
- The British Library

Maslaha translates from the Arabic as ‘for the common good’ and this is the driving force behind all our work.

Maslaha creates new ways of tackling long-standing issues affecting communities. We combine imagination and craftsmanship to improve services, change attitudes and challenge systems of inequality.  We work to influence practice, policy and public imagination. Our work ranges from health interventions to working with ex-offenders, to addressing gender inequality, to exhibitions that have toured 35 cities in 11 countries across Europe. Our work is rooted in locality but is used nationally and internationally.

In 2012, Maslaha was named one of Britain’s 50 New Radicals by NESTA and the Observer newspaper. In 2014 Maslaha’s work in mental health was announced winner of the global Innovation Mindset Challenge, a competition run by Project Innovation in New York and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Columbia University.

Visit our main website at: www.maslaha.org and support our work here.

Since its inception, Poet in the City has been transforming public experiences of live poetry, changing a market consisting primarily of small exclusive poetry readings to include large scale performances for audiences regularly exceeding 350 in number.

Staging 45 high-profile performances each year in venues ranging from Kings Place and the British Museum to Amnesty International and The Royal College of Surgeons, Poet in the City aims to demonstrate the socially inclusive value of poetry; its work highlights how poets throughout history have grappled with life to provide thought-provoking experiences to audiences.

Poet in the City also regularly commissions new work. Education, employability and volunteering are at our core, and this work enables Poet in the City to support civil society and capitalise on the arts as a means to public engagement and social well-being. www.poetinthecity.co.uk

This project has been generously funded by: