Through the mediums of memoir and poetry, Uyghur poet and memoirist Tahir Hamut Izgil and Iraqi American poet Dunya Mikhail challenge dominant political narratives and preserve stories of displacement, exile and perseverance. In his memoir, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night, Izgil documents the Chinese governmentโs persecution of the Uyghur people and his time in a labor camp. In Mikhailโs poetry collection, Tablets: Secrets of Clay, she explores her familyโs exile from Iraq while looking back at Iraqi history.
In a dynamic discussion at the PEN World Voices Festival, Writing as Resistance, moderated by novelist Mojgan Ghazirad (The House on Sun Street), Izgil and Mikhail delved into the urgency of documenting personal and collective experiences, and how the act of writing both engenders change and urges us towards the future.
On how they became writers:
Mikhail shared a humorous anecdote about how when she was younger, a teacher asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Mikhail responded that she wanted to be a โprophet.โ Her teacher was not happy about that, explaining, โThereโs no prophet after the prophet Mohammed.โ But as Mikhail explained, โI was not religious, but I think I wanted to be a writer. And I thought only prophets write.โ
Izgil, whose answers were translated for the audience by his daughter, said, โMy passion to write also began with storytelling and story makingโฆWhen I was a child, in those long winter nights, I listened to stories from my parents. Later, I became a poet, and in my poems, thereโs also storytelling embedded.โ
Every poem is a smuggled truth.
On resisting surveillance:
In response to a question about whether it was or is still possible for the Uyghur people to resist Chinese surveillance, Izgil explained the many high-tech ways that China has to surveil the Uyghur population, but emphasized how writing can be a form of resistance: โAs a poet and writer in exile, I believe that the best way I can resist such systematic oppression is to document it, and tell the truth to the world.โ
On the format of Mikhailโs poems:
Mikhailโs book presents her poems in a mixture of text, image, and handwriting. She explained that her poems were inspired by ancient Sumerian clay tablets: โThey recorded stories, emotions, laws, gospel, truth, and the human condition at that time.โ She was trying to โtouch historyโฆas something thatโs still speaking, presentโฆto allow its brokenness to speak to us.โ The cracks in the tablets โdo not erase the message, they enhance it. So, a broken tablet may lose a line in the poem, but that fracture adds meaning. It adds to the poemโฆIโm trying to imitate those cracks.โ She also conceived of her handwriting as a โliving script.โ โI was having this living script knotting together languagesโArabic and English; historiesโSumerian and contemporary; themesโexile and belonging.โ Tying it all together, she theorized that โevery poem is a tablet, not only in form, but as a functionโฆsomething to be held and broken, buried, found again, something to be held as a secret.โ
Because Iโm a poet of a group of oppressed people, because of this identity, I can never escape politics. So even though I only document or describe my own individual feelings, a lot of the time these feelings resonate with broader collective memories. I slowly realized that I am on the path of, sort of, combining individual feeling and collective destiny in my poems.
On writing about politics:
Izgil: โI am a poet who doesnโt like politics at all. But because Iโm a poet of a group of oppressed people, because of this identity, I can never escape politics. So even though I only document or describe my own individual feelings, a lot of the time these feelings resonate with broader collective memories. I slowly realized that I am on the path of, sort of, combining individual feeling and collective destiny in my poems. And maybe this path will give more layers to my poems, and make [them] more powerful.โ
On the role of writers:
Izgil highlighted writersโ ability to be truth tellers, saying โOppression is oppression, no matter where it happens, or by whom, or who is suffering. Oppression is always that fundamental thing. As a writer, our obligation is to tell the truth, and say the truth to everyone, because the [people who commit] oppression [are] most afraid of truth.โ
Mikhail explained that a poetโs concern is โthe moment before and the moment after, not the moment of destruction.โ She explained, โI am a poet of small details. I feel they are more effective than the big ones. I call them the small things with big shadowsโฆI feel these details of life are more effective than slogans.โ She went on to highlight the power of a poem, saying, โEvery poem is a smuggled truth.โ
Want more?
Check out the panelistsโ books:
- Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil
- Tablets: Secrets of Clay by Dunya Mikhail
- The House on Sun Street by Mojgan Ghazirad
