Review: "Khamoshi" by Qudsia Akhtar

 

Khamoshi by Qudsia Akhtar
Published March 2022 via Verve Poetry Press
★★★

She is a cautionary tale of the feminine curse, / people read her like braille and spit out the words / and fill in the blanks with her name, alongside countless / women who made the same mistake. (30)

Khamoshi ("Silence" in Hindi) takes readers through a life lived in diaspora. Pulling from Muhammed Iqbal, the book seeks identity in something of a liminal space—either British and Pakistani or neither British nor Pakistani, or perhaps both and neither; defined by others based on external factors (skin color, clothing, female body); asking questions about and calling attention to the ways in which other is forced upon a person.

The poems here take various forms—some tightly corralled, two or three words per line; others sprawling across the page; a few two-line poems; a few focused on rhyme. This is not a book to be read all in one go but to take some time with—two poems here, a poem there. I returned to some pieces to pick out more details (poetry is not my first language), and I'm curious to see what will stick with me if I return to this in the future.

I do not only address today. I sing riots / for tomorrow. I interrupt the song / of change and sing my verse. I exist / to exist for us. Project our voice to say: // I carry the charge of a thousand feet. / They thrash against the barriers / of history and wake the dead / to riot, to riot with me. (64)

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.