Lecture: Escaping the Margins: Poetry of Protest, Poetry of Power

On Thursday, July 14th Shadab Hashmi shared her poetry with the diverse audience of clergy, academics, students, and members of the public community. Her powerful words of protest oppression, division, and injustice shed insight into life as a Muslim woman growing up in Peshawar, as well as her immigrant experience in the US.

She also shared words of hope and beauty in her poetry on fruitful interfaith relations as a mark of societal success, technological advancement, academic scholarship, peacemaking, etc. As marked by the “Convivencia” in Al-Andalus, or “Muslim” Spain.

It was a wonderful event with a poetry reading, a dramatic reading with attendees, and talk about the composition of poetry, and the role that poetry plays for the writer and reader.

Date: Thursday, July 14, 2016
Time: 6:00pm Reception; 6:30pm Talk
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College

Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Baker of Tarifa, a book based on the history of interfaith tolerance in Al Andulus (Muslim Spain), won the 2011 San Diego Book Award for poetry. She will read poems that offer perspectives on conflict, coexistence and identity in the story of Al Andulus and Pakistan. In her book Baker of Tarifa, she revisits Muslim Spain (711-1492), tracing the history of interfaith tolerance in this legendary civilization through poems featuring historical and imaginary figures.

Her new collection, Kohl & Chalk, delves into questions of identity, as she explores Pakistan’s colonial history, the ravages of the Soviet war in Afghanistan— which she observed as a child growing up in Peshawar— and the post 9/11 wars during which she has been raising her own children.

Shadab Zeest Hashmi has recently presented from Baker of Tarifa, her poetry based on the history of Muslim Spain (or Al Andulus) in Spain and Mexico, and her essays and poetry based on the Urdu forms of ghazal and qasida in Turkey, Pakistan and the UK. Her essays can be found in 3 Quarks Daily and elsewhere online.