Romalyn Ante and Rupinder Kaur in Conversation with Liz Berry

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

This week's episode brings Liz Berry, Romalyn Ante and Rupinder Kaur together, three powerhouse poets from the Midlands.
Featuring a series of wonderful readings of the poems from their collections Rooh and Antiemetic for Homesickness, Rupinder and Romalyn join Liz for a discussion of their work, the importance of poetry during a pandemic and the power of poetry to connect us.

The Birmingham Lit Fest Presents... podcast brings writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday across the next few months we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions
about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.

Take a look at the rest of this year's digital programme on our website: https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/.
For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

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Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Guest Curator: Kit de Waal
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

Kit de Waal

I’m Kit de Waal, writer and Guest Curator of this year’s Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. Today’s episode brings Liz Berry, Romalyn Ante and Rupinder Kaur together, three powerhouse poets from the Midlands. Featuring a series of wonderful readings of the poems from their collections Rooh and Antiemetic for Homesickness, Rupinder and Romalyn join Liz for a discussion of their work, the importance of poetry during a pandemic and the power of poetry to connect us.

Sponsor message

This episode of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents… podcast is brought to you in partnership with the University of Wolverhampton. Visit their website at www.wlv.ac.uk for information on January 2021 enrolment.

Liz Berry

Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us across the miles for this very special Birmingham Literature Festival podcast. I'm Liz Berry, a poet and patron of writing West Midlands and I'm delighted to be introducing you to two of the brightest rising stars on the poetry scene: Rupinder Kaur and Romalyn Ante. These two wonderful Midlands poets bring us what's best and most exciting about contemporary poetry – true heart and deep feeling; a meeting of gorgeous, lyrical languages; and an engagement with the stories and experiences which transform us. I'm going to introduce both the poets to you and then we'll hear their poems and chat about their work and the importance of poetry in difficult times.

My first guest, Romalyn Ante, is a nurse, award-winning poet and editor. She was born in San Sebastian in the Philippines, where she lived until she migrated to the UK at 16. Romalyn's poems have won many awards, including the prestigious Poetry London Prize and the Manchester Poetry Prize. Romalyn was the co-founding editor of Harana Poetry journal, a journal for poets who write with English as a second or parallel language. This summer Romalyn published her first full collection with Chatto [an imprint of Penguin], Antiemetic for Homesickness, and it's already received rave reviews and acclaim, being named an Observer Poetry book of the month.

My second guest is the wonderful Rupinder Kaur. Rupinder is a Birmingham Punjabi poet, performer, workshop facilitator and creative curator. Her debut poetry book, Rooh (2018) was published by Verve Poetry Press. She's been awarded a DYCP grant from the Arts Council to work on a next poetry collection. And is currently a BBC New Creative developing an audio piece with Rural Media.

Rupinder and Romalyn, welcome! Thank you both for joining me. I wish we could all be together having a cup of tea and chatting about your poems in front of an audience. But as this has been a really different kind of year, we're just going to imagine instead. We're going to pour our virtual tea, get comfy on our virtual sofa. And Romalyn. I'd love you to start us off by reading a poem, please.

Romalyn Ante

Thank you. Thanks so much, Liz, and thank you for that wonderful introduction. The first poem that I'm going to read is called Names. And it has an epigraph which I will read before I read the poem.

In the Philippines I grew up with an absentee mother. So my mother worked abroad as a nurse in order to provide a better chance in life for us. But that experience was not unique to me. So in 2018 nine million children in the Philippines were left behind by their parents. And I guess this first poem attempts to explore what it means to be exiled through employment, not only through physically but also emotionally, and what it means to find a sense of belonging and a sense of knowing in the names that are given to us.

Names

‘We are nameless, and all names are ours’

EMMANUEL LACABA

My mother’s name is Rosana, but when she left,

I had other mothers. Rowena, Jimboy, Alma.

I was named after

the first syllables of my parents;

I will always have them with me.

My mother says not all names have meaning –

Riverside. Manila. London. Kurba.

And someday I will forget

all the commands I did not heed –

like the time I did not spin the plate clockwise

before my father left for work

even if it would deliver him from accidents.

Not all destinations are found

in the junctions of your palm lines.

Say better life, say better life.

And God knows I am repenting.

Say airbus-something, say one-way ticket, keep following the sunset. Clouds are the closest things to my mother.

Say United Kingdom, say the queen, NHS. Does winter always mean – ?

Listen – can you hear it? The loneliness of stretchers along A&E corridors.

And the strongest part of me

is the scar I hide underneath my fringe.

My mother

hides in the staff toilet

to make long-distance calls

Someday I will realise

the woman lonely in her mansion

is not my mother

but a future version of myself.

I will chop bitter gourds

on the galaxy-glimmer

of her worktop.

Shall we shorten your name on your name tag so it’s easier to remember? Say Yes please, Sister.

Say Please, Sister, can I take this call?

Say Arnold, Marcus, Harold. Say septicaemia, alcohol poisoning, hernia.

Say Jason, Darius, Vernon. Say cancer, myocardial infarction, query schizophrenia.

Hides in the toilet.

And I have the first syllables

of my parents' names,&...