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