PEN Transmissions

August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

Someone else’s words in your mouth

In this imagining of yourself you speak English and it is 2018 and you identify as female. The world seems to be caving in around you, almost apocalyptic. You begin to notice words more than you have done before.

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August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

Nature and control

I should say at the outset that being a product of my surroundings, I am not particularly in tune with the natural world. I have always lived in extremely built-up cities where I can get everywhere on foot or by public transport. I grew up in Singapore.

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August 23, 2018

Nature bubbling out: a conversation with Mahvash Sabet

I never consciously make a decision about what to say in a poem: the poem itself says itself. So the poem happens. It doesn’t happen because I have decided that it should happen. It wasn’t a conscious decision to write about nature. The nature just bubbled out.

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August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

Editorial: nature and its absence

What do you think about when you think about nature? Weeds? Mountains? The sea? Do you think about its absence, or perceived absence, in cities? Or do you ponder human nature?

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August 23, 2018August 23, 2018

Little voices

‘Never mind what the TV says! The weather is getting worse, my bones don’t lie!’ That was one of the expressions I’d hear hundreds of times in my childhood. And it was true: technology left room for error, but not one’s bones.

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July 31, 2018August 23, 2018

Editorial: secrets

The idea that we are surrounded by secret undercurrents that shape our interactions is appealing and depressing in an equal fashion. Appealing because there are mysteries to be uncovered, intimacies to be shared.

July 31, 2018August 23, 2018

Secrets and boundaries

What you think is normal might be very strange to others. You emulate certain behaviours. When you become a teenager, you start to compare yourself even more.

July 31, 2018August 23, 2018

How, Telling

You will never know my best-kept secret. I’m almost certain that it is not shareable — you can’t push your thumbs into it and hand out its segments.

July 31, 2018August 23, 2018

We grew up fearful and confused

When I was a little girl, everyone around me believed that sex was a sin.

July 31, 2018August 23, 2018

The teeth in the texts

It clicks in my head like magic, like a small lamp switching on in the corner of the stage, outside the spotlight.

June 19, 2018July 31, 2018

Editorial: writing the past

We asked four writers to reflect on different aspects of how they write the past: from personal history to a country’s official past…