In this podcast, we bring you poems that take the form of messages from afar, the poets are addressing loved ones but communicating to the reader as well, the implied distance between the writer and the addressee standing in for personal and emotional distance. 

Kajal Ahmad was born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad began publishing her remarkable poetry at the age of 21 and has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work throughout the Kurdish-speaking world. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Norwegian and now, for the first time, into English.

Noshi Gillani was born in Pakistan in 1964. The candour and frankness of her highly-charged poems is unusual for a woman writing in Urdu and she has gained a committed international audience, performing regularly at large poetry gatherings in Pakistan, Australia, Canada and the US. Unknown outside the Pakistani community, the translations here mark her introduction to an English-speaking audience.

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