麻豆约拍

Daljit Nagra revisits the 麻豆约拍's poetry archive and chooses Breaking Our Silence.

Salma El-Wardany discusses the connection between poetry and revolution with other poets - both political and personal.

In 2011, poet Salma was part of the Arab Spring uprising in Cairo. Thousands of Egyptians came together in Tahrir Square to fight for a new future. And poetry was everywhere - spray painted on walls, shared on social media, and written into songs that became anthems for the protesters.

"It was a revolution fuelled by poetry," says Salma.

Salma celebrates the connection between poetry and revolution. She speaks to four of her favourite female poets - all women of colour from different corners of the world, whose work fuels revolution, both personal and political.

British-Indian poet Nikita Gill sees her own work written onto placards and hears it chanted in the street on marches.

Yrsa Daley-Ward, award-winning writer of Bone and The Terrible, writes about topics on which women have often been silent.

Tjawangwa Dema argues that what, to a Western audience, might seem like a simple love poem, can be truly revolutionary when written by a woman from Botswana.

And Lisa Luxx shares the power of poetry to unite people into a revolutionary community, as she does by organising feminist literary salons in Beirut.

Salma believes that these poetic revolutions, and her own, all have one thing in common - they involve women speaking out, and refusing to be silenced any longer.

Producer: Hannah Marshall

A 7digital production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4, first broadcast in 2020.

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