I work as a lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies (FACS). As a poet with an academic background in postcolonial theory, I have collaborated across art forms on projects which explore issues of belonging, subjectivity, race and gender. My poetry and projects often focus on place, memory and stories (historical, fictional, mythical); and how they shape one’s sense of self or changing subjectivity. In 2008 I graduated from Glasgow University with a PhD on Jean Rhys’s novels and postcolonial theory, incorporating film theory, French feminism, and psychoanalysis. In addition to being widely published in magazines and anthologies, I have had four short poetry collections published, the first of which, Skirlags, was shortlisted for the Callum MacDonald Award in 2010. As George Mackay Brown Writing Fellow in Orkney (2009-10), I led collaborative projects, working with Orkney traditional dancers, musicians, actors, archaeologists and the RSPB. I have engaged in community projects in Glasgow, using stories from asylum seekers and refugees, as well as intergenerational stories from the South Asian diaspora, to write poetic pieces for stage performances. These include collaborations with Indian classical dancers and were performed at the Citizens Theatre (Ankur Ha-Ha, 2012) and the Tron Theatre (Mayfesto, 2013). I have led on knowledge exchange with Creative Writing workshops, residencies and participation in literature festivals, in Scotland (including Orkney and Shetland), Finland (Lahti International Writers’ Reunion, 2019), France (Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, 2017) and India (Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, 2018). My poetry pamphlet The Raven’s Song was published in 2015 with funding from Ankur Productions (Creative Scotland) and was produced in collaboration with artist Catherine Hiley. Our limited-edition print of the poem ●●●● about Hrafn Floki (the first Norseman to sail deliberately from Norway to Iceland) was produced for The Written Image, with Edinburgh Printmakers Studio and the Scottish Poetry Library, forming part of EP’s Christmas exhibition in December 2013. A copy was sold to the Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, for their Special Books Collection in 2014. In 2015 I received a Tom McGrath Award and Creative Scotland funding for the development of my poetic stage performance, Beyond the Mud Walls, highlighting the life of Freda Bedi (an English woman who fought for India’s independence, and went on to become a Buddhist nun). The performance was developed partly in a residency at DanceBase, Edinburgh; and was showcased at the Traverse Theatre for Stellar Quines in 2016. In 2019 I was commissioned by Enough! Scotland as an artist-in-residence, to research and develop an artistic response to climate change. The book I am developing (currently untitled) explores language, loss, memory and landscape through the development of the female protagonist’s subjectivity. My proposal for a practice-based research proposal was accepted for the GSA symposium, Practicing Landscape (currently postponed); ‘Embodying Language in Wild Spaces: Place, Memory and Transformation’, which was double peer-reviewed. I look forward exciting new projects in which I can develop my interests in landscapes, memory and transformation, and the phenomenological experiences thereof; which are at times informed by a postcolonial framework.
