Tell us a bit about your new poetry collection Requiem.
The features that may be of interest to people are the five poems by my grandfather Mahbubul Alam Chowdhury that I’ve translated. He’s perhaps the greatest influence in my life and I wanted to have that link and feel like I’m having a dialogue with him. I also wanted to bring it to a new readership, as he wrote in Bangla, and I really wanted to tread that path that needs to be explored, because we have a lot of good literature in Bangla that is lost to the world.
Other than that there are 35 of my original poems, some of which have been published in journals abroad.
And you launched it at this year’s Hay Festival.
Yes, it was really about bringing poetry to a place where poetry sits very well. There’s something to be said about poetry on a global stage. If we’re going to be more aware as global citizens, and if we are going to find cultural weapons for injustices in the world – poetry is really the medium.
Speaking of injustice, you had a panel with Kosal Khiev about survival and poetry. How are the two linked?
Kosal Khiev himself spent 16 years in prison and then was deported to Cambodia. He found himself through poetry. His writing is his activism. And I believe that’s how our audience can also connect with these intersecting themes. Being from Bengal, activism is very much inalienable from our culture, and that would connect the dots of activism, survival and poetry very well with our audience.
Are these themes present in your own work?
My writing tends to focus on themes of human condition. I studied human rights law, and there’s a lot of that theme in my work.
So you were trained a human rights lawyer. Why the shift to writing?
My full-time law career was about 5-6 years, and I practiced here in Bangladesh for 18 months.
Why I left? Well, you have to wonder why the legal system exists. It’s difficult to stomach when you are exposed to a system that doesn’t represent the majority of the people. I just couldn’t keep my conscience on the door all the time. And writing about it is necessary. So I made the shift.
What about Bangladesh’s space in world literature?
We are absolutely relevant. We can’t fall into the trap of believing we are not relevant. The way we can become culturally significant is by making ourselves perform.
How does the Hay Festival play a role in that?
These are exciting times. We are very much right in the beginning. The hope is that this steady stream continues, and that the next generation can build on that. We need to create sustainable platforms for younger voices.
