‘this too is a glistening’ is a collaborative pamphlet by Pratyusha, Jessica J. Lee, Alycia Pirmohamed and Nina Mingya Powles. Written over a weekend at Brandenburg, it is a collection of vignettes, poems andprose tackling questions about selfhood, the body and collective responsibility in ecological and humanitarian crises.
The pamphlet itself is an object to behold: comprised of thirty-six pages printed on recycled paper, stitched together by green thread, complete with a pink risograph print by Pratyusha, it speaks towards the care and intention gone toward its making.
‘Write about a moment when the weather was sound and you felt this in your body’, begins the first chapter. Passages are interspersed by timestamps and place, individual chapters or passages aren’t attributed to a specific writer. Instead, their responses to the prompt, questions for each other and observations are woven together.
The book is structured by refusals and disruption: a refusal to be boxed in, a refusal of borders and boundaries, a disruption of notions of sole authorship and creation. They address each other, and other people by letters of their name, the reader is given a glimpse of who is being addressed or spoken about. Speaking of the act of writing and spending time together, they note, ‘A spoke about how strange and funny it is to find long, dark strands of hair around the place and not be sure they belong to you.’
This process of co-creation, reflected in the interspersed threads of their writing, is not without tension. A narrator says, ‘I am not accustomed to writing in proximity.’, ‘I am possessive with my words.’ The togetherness, however, is one that also brings them solace in thinking or writing through pressing questions. ‘Here, briefly, it doesn’t feel as though everything is burning.’
Moving between immersive and sensory details from their walks, swims and time together, the writing switches between present and past recollections. Birthplaces are not specified, but evoked in the landscapes as ‘place of the Lombardy poplars’ or ‘fields of millet and neithal flowers.’ Yearning and loss thread the memories. Borders are blurred, as are their bodies against their surroundings, ‘our worlds coalesce beyond the margins’, a narrator says.
While the narrative blurs and blends voices and stories, the writing is also rich with precisely wrought images – a stall-holder’s hand is a ‘clamshell squeezing shut’, an afternoon is ‘jade-green.’ Sitting in front of a lake, they wonder ‘how much longer it will know ice.’ Their concerns span their immediate environments and beyond. Gaza is a recurrent thread, as they name and mark the genocide that weighs on their collective conscious and in their efforts outside of writing. Silences are brought to question –
whether national, communal or personal.
‘this too is a glistening‘ brings together images, impressions and questions that speak to a collective mission to hold witness, to not accept the narratives imposed on us or others and of turning to community in solidarity, in resistance.
this too is a glistening is published by Bitter Melon press and available here: bittermelon.weebly.com
Fathima Zahra is a poet, performer and facilitator based in London. Her debut pamphlet ‘sargam /swargam’ (ignitionpress, 2021) was selected as PBS pamphlet choice.