“what cannot otherwise be said”

Curated by Zeenat Nagree

a poem inhabits its own clarity, which may be deeply mysterious but that’s different from unclear. and at best, it is an unparaphrasable clarity. it says what cannot otherwise be said—and it is an encounter with the unsayable

Chen Chen, 4 December 2021

When the domains of clarity and mystery intersect, there appear simultaneously people walking cabbages in Lal Chowk and Tiana nmen Square, and someone with a watermelon in Cairo. All at risk, all defiant. It is then that we see evidence of a creature forming and reforming itself in a fiery world listening to the lament of a woman who once lived in Albuquerque. The fragrance of death seems near. The poet enters time, and falls. And so it is that the world is cut open, and we swim inside the body, that vast sea within. It is a world of wounds and grief, the counting of minutes, the absurd measuring of space and objects. It is a world undone, coming together anew. New bodies and old stories cracking open the canon, turning around and looking back with a challenge, moving to their own accord, persevering. 

Featuring: Ali Asgar Tara, Amol K Patil, Ashfika Rahman, Chen Chen, Devika Sundar, Han Bing, Heba Y Amin, Kashmiri Cabbage Walker, Hussein Nassereddine + Kayfa ta, Ratna Gupta, Raven Chacon, Sahej Rahal, Vicky Sabourin

Zeenat Nagree is an independent writer and curator living between Bombay and Montréal.

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