LOVE AFTER BABEL AND OTHER POEMS – CHANDRAMOHAN S

Posted on July 21, 2021 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged caste, Chandramohan S, colonialism, creative writing, culture, Dalit, Deeptha Achar, featured, Hayan Charara, Hindu right, imperialism, India, intersectionality, islamophobia, Letters to Namdeo Dhasal, Love After Babel and Other Poems, Malayalam, migration, Muslims, oppression, poetry, post-colonial, radical politics, resistance, South Asia, translation.

By Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya

The following was originally published as the afterword to the collection Love after Babel and Other Poems by Chandramohan S, published in January 2020 by Daraja Press. The collection won the Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista Outstanding Book Award in January of this year. You can order a copy direct from Daraja Press here.

They ask me why do you write poems?
I write poems – the people have the right to…bear arms.

These lines, taken from his one-stanza masterpiece ‘Why Do I Write Poetry?’, encapsulate the very essence of Chandramohan S’ approach to his craft in his third collection, Love after Babel and Other Poems. These poems are unapologetically weapons, fighting against the pre-modern notion of caste in all its insidious 21st century glory.

REVIEW: DARLING, IT’S ME BY ALISON WINCH

Posted on July 30, 2019 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged alison winch, breastfeeding, darling it's me, Enlightenment era, featured, feminism, intersectionality, john locke, motherhood, poetry, review, thomas hobbes.

By Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya

I was eager to get my hands on a copy of Alison Winch’s debut poetry collection, Darling, It’s Me. With ‘fiercely feminist’ poems on the themes of motherhood and marriage, I was expecting rich, analysable material and I undoubtedly found it. Winch intersperses her narrative of contemporary women’s experiences with a series of extended metaphors rooted in Enlightenment philosophies and the European societies where these were developed, occasionally shifting form to witty sketches involving philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

LOOKING BEYOND THE FEMINIST T-SHIRT

Posted on June 21, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged bell hooks, Beyonce, black lives matter, child labour, commodity, consume, consumerism, cotton, david cameron, Dawn Foster, farming, Fawcett Society, feminism, intersectionality, Jacob V Joyce, Kendall Jenner, lgbtQ+, nick clegg, People Tree, Pepsi, privilege, product placement, representation, River Island, sweatshops, Topshop, tshirt, white feminism, women.

by Carmina Masoliver

With the Feminist movement having become more a part of the mainstream, there is a tendency to call it a new wave. But Feminism is something that is always flowing, with plenty of grassroots activists doing work ‘to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression’ (as defined by bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody, 2000). Whilst the movement’s popularity means there are films with stronger female characters, and Feminist comedians can easily be seen on Netflix, it also means that various corporations try to sell us back our politics. Continue Reading

YOUNG GERMANS AND URBAN GLORIFICATION

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged AAVE, appropriation, art, ball, berlin, bigot, Brexit, City, commodification, demand, drag, exoticism, fetish, fetishisation, gender, gentrification, germany, globalisation, housing, housing crisis, identity, intersectionality, landlord, lease, lgbtQ+, liberalism, london, neocolonialism, QTBPOC, queer, race, racism, rent, renting, safe spaces, self-congratulatory, spaces, urban, West, young, Zoopla.

by Candice Nembhard

In recent years the discussion of gentrification and globalisation has become almost unavoidable – and for the most part, these terms have now been resigned as popular buzzwords in pseudo-intellectual conversations. As glib as this may sound, I shall do my best to explain.

While many a piece has been written on this subject, this is in fact not my primary focus. My intention is not to deny the lived and consequential reality of western mobilisation, but rather look towards the supporters and benefactors of this growing socio-economic practice. In particular, a generation of young people who are forgoing academic careers in favour of acquired/inherited wealth and personal development. More specifically, I will focus on my experience in post-Brexit Germany.Continue Reading

FUCK OFF, TERFS: DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERNET HATE MACHINE

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national, Perspectives and tagged bi erasure, female socialisation, feminism, feminist, gaslighting, gender, gender critical, gender reassignment, homophobia, intersectionality, LGBT+, men's rights movement, mental health, misogyny, Neo-Nazis, Neo-Nazism, online harassment, oppression, sex, social media, terf, trans exclusionary radical feminist, trans men, transgender, transphobia, twitter, twitter storm, women.

by Zoe Harding

Content warning: article contains strong language and mentions transphobia, rape, death threats, online harassment, homophobia, biphobia and bi erasure.

So this week a friend of mine said something on Twitter about accepting transgender people as people, regardless of genitalia. One of those reasonable discussions that occasionally ensue on the internet ensued, and ended with her getting dog-piled with sufficient angry, hateful messages to nearly crash her ageing iPhone and accusations ranging from homophobia to gaslighting and advocacy of corrective rape. While the barrage of tweets from a dozen accounts was polite by online discourse standards (for ‘polite’, read ‘no swearing but massively condescending, dismissive, pompous and worryingly intense’) the death threats and abuse that followed in private messages was significantly less so.

Once more, my friend had attracted the ire of the TERFs.Continue Reading

I’M A FEMINIST, BUT

Posted on December 12, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged ableism, feminism, gender equality, gender equity, intersectional feminism, intersectionality, misandry, misogyny, suffragettes, white feminism.

by Alice Thomson

I’ve known a few women who’ve said, “I would never get married. I wouldn’t be a good feminist if I did.” What does it mean to be a ‘good feminist?’ Do we even want to be feminists, especially when feminists are frequently derided as man-haters? How did it come to this? I always thought feminism was about gender equality. From an uneducated standpoint I understood it to be a movement designed to create equal opportunities for women within work, politics, home and social life, but it seems to have become so much more than this. Feminism means different things to different people. I’m no expert on the subject, but I’d like to think I am a feminist even though I’ve never read a book on the matter. So I decided to try and educate myself – and here is what I understand:

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES – SISTERS UNCUT, YARL’S WOOD AND DIRECT ACTION

Posted on November 30, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Inter|national and tagged anti austerity, austerity, campaign, campaigning, cuts, direct action, disabled people against cuts, domestic abuse, domestic violence, grassroots, immigration, international, intersectional feminism, intersectionality, london radical housing network, migration, Movement for Justice, non-violent direct action, nvda, student rent strikes, Yarl's Wood.

TW: Violence against women, domestic abuse, rape

By Abbie Mulcairn

The debate over the effectiveness of ‘traditional’ forms of campaigning like phone banking, door knocking, compared with ‘direct’ actions like demonstrations, protests and occupations, is long-running, but ultimately counter-productive. As part of this debate, direct action is often attacked for ignoring or speaking over the voices of ‘ordinary people’, or for having little impact in the ‘real world’.

REVIEW: BURNT ROTIS, WITH LOVE, BY PRERNA BAKSHI

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged #readwomen, artivism, body, burnt rotis with love, cancer, death, dream, empowerment, expectations, feminism, Foxconn, gender roles, gender violence, girlhood, grief, Hindu, India, intersectionality, language, neoliberal, poem, poet, poetry, politics, Prerna Bakshi, review, rhyme, rhythm, Sheryl Sandberg, slurs, South Asia, Urdu, white feminism, womanhood, women, women writers, writing, Xu Lizhi.

by Carmina Masoliver

Prerna Bakshi’s debut collection Burnt rotis, with love was published in 2016 by Le Zaporogue via Lulu.com. Poems featured in the collection have appeared in many literary journals, magazines and anthologies across the world. Hailing from India, Bakshi offers a refreshing perspective on feminism and the wider would, enlightening readers with its undeniable South Asian roots.Continue Reading

TODAY’S ‘INTERSECTIONALITY’

Posted on October 2, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts, Perspectives and tagged #BlackLivesMatter, art, artist, Asia Patel, Betty Selby, biro, black man, BLM, cartoon, comment, feminism, intersectionality, manslaughter, original art, original design, parody, pen, police, police brutality, quick, race, racism, response, satire, shade, sketch, Terence Crutcher, US, victim, white feminism, white feminist, WOKE.

by Asia Patel

UNIVERSITY OF KERALA AND FEMINIST THOUGHT

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged agency, British Council, climate change, environment, equal pay, equality, feminism, feminist thought, gendering, Generation UK India, global warming, graduates, impact, India, intersectionality, Kerala, lecture, literacy, popular cinema, power dynamics, racism, rubbish, students, Thiruvananthapuram, university of kerala, waste, western feminism, white saviour, women.

by Sam Naylor

From the 8 – 24^th of August I attended a Generation UK – India programme. The fortnight programme was organised between the British Council and the University of Kerala, which was founded in 1937, to engage 46 British students and graduates with a taste of Contemporary India: Culture and Society. The study placement covered a lot of ground, ranging from a lecture on Indian foreign policy to visiting their ancient manuscript library, to learning the state language of Malayalam and gendering Indian popular cinema. The course’s content was as diverse as the state we were studying in and the people who attended the study trip.Continue Reading

intersectionality

LOVE AFTER BABEL AND OTHER POEMS – CHANDRAMOHAN S

By Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya

REVIEW: DARLING, IT’S ME BY ALISON WINCH

LOOKING BEYOND THE FEMINIST T-SHIRT

YOUNG GERMANS AND URBAN GLORIFICATION

I’M A FEMINIST, BUT

SISTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES – SISTERS UNCUT, YARL’S WOOD AND DIRECT ACTION

REVIEW: BURNT ROTIS, WITH LOVE, BY PRERNA BAKSHI

TODAY’S ‘INTERSECTIONALITY’

UNIVERSITY OF KERALA AND FEMINIST THOUGHT

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