#writers of india

[blahblahblaw18]

What Remains

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What happens when the fire in the ammunition is extinguished,

What happens when the brown green yellow patterns of fabric

cease to camouflage burly men

and are merely relegated to keeping bruised bodies warm?

What happens once the Kalashnikov chokes and the guns are laid to rest?

What happens after the throat goes sore and the war cry dies down?

What happens when the tufts of grass that can't discern the difference

Between oxygen and carbon dioxide wilt away at the scent of smoke

What happens after the soil, saturated by the blood of men

Says, no more! And the sun drowns into the horizon in shame

not wanting to shine glory onto a gory land anymore?

What remains is the harsh winter wind making every body

strewn across the dammed land, dead or alive, shiver all the same

Shiver at humanity's inhumane yearnings

Shiver at the sin that has been committed by the sons of the land

What remains is the memory of a loving family left behind

A love that is now long lost, and tears left unshed

That is all that remains after the fire is extinguished

yours,

IL

Written on 21/09/2021

[gossameraesthete]

burning tears, edom in my head, spiralling galaxies and fish eye dreams- this is what you’ve done to me. you’re slithering around my heart like a caged animal: a bereaved basilisk; vindictive and vulturous and i don’t know whether to crown you or put you down like an old farm dog. yet here i stand in the ghost of your shadows, like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts, yearning to go home (a place i never had)

[breezesummers]

If you love poetry, especially multimodal/visual poetry, please let me rave to you about these authors who just presented their new books at a live reading I attended:

The live reading, titled “HYBRIDITIES: ‘Daughter Isotope’ X ‘Failure Biographies,’” was hosted by a person named Elæ (they/them), a representative from The Operating System & Liminal Labs. 

They began with a note on Land Acknowledgements and each speaker was encouraged to provide a visual description for attendees who were unable to see them for any reason. The group featured a number of nonbinary, trans, and queer artists and authors, and the event was very inclusive!

Every title is posted on The Operating System’s Open Access Site as they are published, in order to keep works accessible and prevent gatekeeping. Please check out this link to access the works for FREE: https://www.theoperatingsystem.org/os-open-access-community-publications-library/

If you can afford it and would like to financially support these authors and artists, please follow the links I’ve included below!

CAConrad (they/them), “Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration”

Click here to access Conrad’s website and to learn more about this queer author’s poetry: https://linktr.ee/CAConrad88

Here is an excerpt:

"To know glitter on a queer is not to dazzle but to / unsettle the foundation of this murderous culture / defiant weeds smashing up through cement."  - CAConrad, Amanda Paradise, from a poem dedicated to all those they had lost to AIDS.

About the book: “The poems in AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration reach out from a (Soma)tic poetry ritual where CA flooded their body with the field recordings of recently extinct animals. Foundational here are the memories of loved ones who died of AIDS, the daily struggle of existing through the Corona Virus pandemic, and the effort to arrive at a new way of falling in love with the world as it is, not as it was.”

Amanda Paradise can be purchased here: https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/amanda-paradise 

Bishakh Som (she/her), “Spellbound” and “Apsara Engine”

Click here to access Som’s website and learn more about this transgender artist’s comic poetry: https://www.bishakh.com

Spellbound is Som’s autobiographical work. More information and excerpts can be found here: https://www.bishakh.com/project/spellbound/

About Apsara Engine: “The eight delightfully eerie stories in Apsara Engine are a subtle intervention into everyday reality: a woman drowns herself in a past affair, a tourist chases another guest into an unforeseen past, and a nonbinary academic researches postcolonial cartography. Imagining diverse futures and rewriting old mythologies, these comics delve into strange architectures, fetishism, and heartbreak.”

Apsara Engine can be purchased here: https://www.feministpress.org/books-a-m/apsara-engine?rq=apsara

Johnny Damm (he/him), “FAILURE BIOGRAPHIES”

Click here to access Damm’s website and learn more about his work, which combines multimodal elements such as comics, Depression-era photography and lines from found postcards: https://johnnydamm.com 

Here is an excerpt:

“Art of itself is of little or no value if…it does not effect a change / in the behavior of human beings.” - Noah Purifoy via Johnny Dam, Failure Biographies

About Failure Biographies: “ Damm (The Science of Things Familiar) upends the usual fare of celebratory biographies of successful lives by finding inspiration in artists who tried and failed to change the world around them. Using collage techniques to mash up vintage horror and sci-fi comics like Tomb of Terror with WPA photography from the Great Depression, Damm documents forgotten lives and plumbs great meaning via unusual, macabre visuals that manage to jibe with their real-world subjects’ lives.” (From Publishers Weekly)

If you want to hear Damm go deeper into the process of creating 'Failure Biographies,’ check out his interview here: https://medium.com/the-operating-system/true-and-irrevocable-failure-9a4dc2d5db9d)

Failure Biographies can be purchased here: https://www.theoperatingsystem.org/product/failure-biographies/ 

In addition, you can purchase Johnny Damm’s “FAILURE” t-shirts here (I think these are very cool - follow Damm in embracing failure):  https://dammnation.threadless.com/designs/failure/mens/t-shirt/regular?color=gold

The Operating System also has a Redbubble featuring Johnny Damm’s “I am an exhibitionist” Failure Biographies merch (also looks very cool): https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/86916700 

Also check out “The Science of Things Familiar” — Johnny’s 2017 OS project: https://bookshop.org/books/the-science-of-things-familiar/9781946031037?aid=4259&listref=os-class-of-2017 

And finally, the love of my life: 

Vidhu Aggarwal (she/they), “DAUGHTER ISOTOPE”

Dr. Vidhu Aggarwal is an English and visual poetry professor whose work is surreal and utterly brilliant. They also combine poetry with visual elements, such as comic collages. I’ll include photos from Daughter Isotope in a reblog of this post.

About Daughter Isotope: “Daughter Isotope is a book of “hybrid” poems that speaks to multiple iterations of ‘daughter’ tropes across generations, national borders, and timescales. Central to the question of the Daughter Isotope is: What is a collective archive? Within a global, disparate, migrant cultural space. DI is organized in a series of four ‘clouds,’ calling up the vague, penetrable borders of our digital lives, both searching and searchable.”  

If you want to hear Aggarwal go deeper into the process of creating ‘Daughter Isotope,’ check out the interview here (also appears in the back of the book): https://medium.com/the-operating-system/a-cloud-poetics-b6f81cb5ac75

A quote I like from the book which I feel reveals an overarching theme: 

“The diasporic entity as hacker breaking into this encoded world.”

Daughter Isotope can be purchased here: https://www.theoperatingsystem.org/product/daughter-isotope

There are also two different merch series for Aggarwal’s work on The Operating System’s Redbubble:  https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/86922313 

Thank you for reading all of this if you have! I really think these experimental artists are doing some cool and important work. Once again, if you would consider purchasing their books or merch and are financially able to, please do! If not, check them for FREE here: https://www.theoperatingsystem.org/os-open-access-community-publications-library/  

I hope they inspire you as much as they’ve inspired me. 

[pavanisingh]

Selfish - Kyra Chiller

Check out my Instagram for more!!!!

Thank you all so much for your support!!! I love you all <3

[madaheadstories]

Let us know your guesses in the comment section and stay tuned for more "Who Am I?" Use the MadAhead app to create quirky characters of your own!

[sauravbanerjee]

[trustonlystars]

I write because I want to leave the last few traces of my existence, so someone could hold onto it when my memories wisp away. These souls who stumble over the odds of life- I want them to know that it is okay to be vulnerable, to breakdown, and, to love.

Writing brings me the ability to describe magic in near blurry words, to describe something so profound and miraculous. And just like that, something that seems extremely out of reach will someday sit softly on your palms. And you'd gaze at it wondering how'd it happen.

I write because I want at least one person to believe in the magic that I talk about. I want them to know that- you can only learn to get away if you learn to get through. And life, is not about filling every page with adventure and sharp memories. Some pages are meant to be blank, they’re simply about unwinding, being with yourself and nowhere else.

I write so it could help someone untangle the mess, and I write for it helps me to untangle the knots I’ve tied all across my soul.

- trustonlystars | Jannie F.

[anujpareeek]

[floraclarkphotograpger]

Miracles are awfully needed.

[worldofjayy-blog1]

Day #1

[boredombloger]

Love begins at first sight.You fall for her at the very first sight because she looks perfect.Then you will get to know her imperfections making you realise those were the reasons she looked perfect to you.That's the moment,love becomes forever.

[thedistrictsleepsalonetonight]

I found a million stories

I found a story today, tucked in between the arms of my blanket.

I don’t know if it is an interesting story. It started somewhere in the creases, meandered off to the tiny strings of fabric escaping the corners, and ended, inevitably, in sleep. I wrote a quarter of it, and it somehow felt incomplete, so I looked around for more stories.

Found one in the trash bin just beside my bed, the tiny plastic container overflowing with wafer wrappers and chocolate pieces, and cookie crumbs, in the small piece of paper with two lines written on them, the result of a fleeting moment of inspiration in the middle of class that had made me give up my pretense of paying attention to scribble it down on paper. I found another in the three almost wilted balloons lying in the corner of my bedroom floor, memories of a birthday gone past. My friend walked in with yet another, waking me up from a nap, and not caring at all.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll find some more. A quest of a dog pulling on my jeans, the balloons the little girl on the street sells every evening, the hopeful smile the man gives me every day as I walk to college, even though he knows I won’t have breakfast at his shop. The story started off with a crease, and hopefully, if I smooth it down a tad bit, it will end with a smile. After all, isn’t that how the best ones are supposed to end?

[madaheadstories]

Well, work from home doesn't seem so boring when you have your pets beside you. What could be better than playing with them! Tag all animal lovers and and tell us about your stories with your pets on the Madahead app. Download Madahead App to create your own group stories! Available now on IOS and Android.

[diane-jones-blog]

Adventures in Art

[boredombloger]