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Prajnya Campaign Against Gender Violence

 

NOT SILENCE, BUT VERSE

Prajnya, an organization based in Chennai, India, partnered in 2012 with the Origami Poems Project for its 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence(Read below for further details.)



The Origami Poems Project was honored to provide template & informational assistance to the Prajnya campaign against Gender Violence.  Below are the micro-chapbooks, Volume I & II, which contained the winning poems.

Origami Micro-chapbook

Selected Poems

No Violence, No Silence (Vol. 1)

 

{mooblock=Ahalya anew by Karthika Nair}

Fathers, husbands, gods:
you will no longer decree
whom I wed or bed.
That choice is mine. To be free
- whether woman, river, stone.

Karthika Nair © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Untitled by Usha Raman}

I could give a damn
about outraged modesty
when it is my self
the totality of me
into which rage has been poured.

Usha Raman © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Night-life by Maadhava Anusuyaa}

In the dead of night
I walk upon the streets: Bravely
But, under the peril of watch dogs.
Maadhava Anusuyaa © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Untitled by Susan Hawthorne}

after violence,
that old family silence
passed on down to him
inheritance in blood
before violence
Susan Hawthorne © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Antigone: remains by Karthika Nair}

You would slit this tongue,
smother voice and bury
breath:
but what of my words?
Yes, words. Like blood, they
will spill,
stain air, earth — and
memory.

Karthika Nair © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Untitled by Usha Raman}

His gaze unzips me
from bus-stop to work and
back
wreaking possession.

Usha Raman © 2012

{/mooblock}

   

No Violence, No Silence (Vol. 2)

 

{mooblock=Untitled by Susan Hawthorne}

how do you tell your mother
you didn’t listen–
the bruise under the skin

Susan Hawthorne © 2012


{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Aisha: How to Breed Darkness by Karthika Nair}

At first, no veils ruled,
no seclusion, no silence:
He called us equals.
Then came Fear and Shame,
prophets armed by others: men, not god.

Karthika Nair © 2012

{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Untitled by Susan Hawthorne}

on a country road
quiet as death
they beat the breath out of her

Susan Hawthorne © 2012


{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Unstuck by Arathi Menon}

Hope is a word called ‘Help’
But it’s stuck in my throat.
One day, when he choked me
It fell on the floor and crawled
to the phone
Then they came. And he went.

Arathi Menon © 2012


{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Draupadi: Violation by Karthika Nair}

Brothers who would feast
on my broken, bleeding thighs:
their dazzle will blind;
touch, and you disrobe not me
but your luckless destiny.

Karthika Nair © 2012


{/mooblock}

{mooblock=Untitled by Susan Hawthorne}
 

holding hands in the street–
the two women
are pelted with rotten eggs


Susan Hawthorne © 2012


{/mooblock}

   

{mooblock=Back Cover Acknowledgments}

This chapbook has been
published as an initiative of the
Prajnya 16 Days Campaign
against Gender Violence 2012.
All poems included in this
chapbook were submitted by
poets in response to a call for
poetry announced by Prajnya
in October 2012. To find out
more about Prajnya, please
visit www.prajnya.in
 
No Violence, No Silence © 2012
 
This template is courtesy of the
Origami Poems Project
 

{/mooblock}

Prajnya is a non-profit, which conducts research and spearheads public education initiatives on issues of peace, justice and security. The 16 Days Campaign against Gender Violence, held between 25 November and 10 December every year, is part of a global movement, led by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, to raise awareness about gender violence, and violence against women in particular. Over the 16 days of the campaign, Prajnya organises multiple events, aimed at both target audiences (such as nurses, therapists, social workers, etc.), as well as the general public, with a variety of programme formats – the 2012 campaign included workshops, symposia, a public forum, a concert and a book reading.

One of the staples of Prajnya’s 16 Days Campaign, featured in every edition of the campaign since its launch in 2008, has been a poetry reading event, in which some of Chennai’s most celebrated poets read their work on violence, equality and emancipation. In order to involve more people in this initiative, the 2012 campaign included an open call for poetry, which encouraged both amateur and professional poets to send in their original haikus and tankas on the theme, ‘No Violence, No Silence’. Select poems were published in Origami micro-chapbooks, in partnership with the Origami Poems Project, and distributed at the poetry reading event, held on 29 November 2012. In addition, the poems featured in the chapbooks were read out by the poets present at the event.

The response to the call for poetry was overwhelming; Prajnya received submissions from all over the world, in three different languages, from both professional and amateur poets. The Prajnya team, with inputs from Sharanya Manivannan, a respected Chennai-based poet, selected twelve powerful poems for the Origami chapbooks; all of these poems, despite the constraints on length that haikus and tankas impose, speak volumes, tackling the difficult theme of gender violence through their diverse imagery and language. Karthika Nair’s poems imagine the voices of historic and mythological women facing violence; Susan Hawthorne examines violence that those who identify as gay experience ; Arathi Menon brings out the anguish of domestic abuse; and Usha Raman and Maadhava Anusuyaa C. effectively address street sexual harassment.

The Origami micro-chapbooks, prepared and folded by the Prajnya team, were very well received at the poetry reading event.

Anupama Srinivasan, Programme Director
Gender Violence Research and Information Taskforce

 

 

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