Issue 21: Gutter Magazine x Scottish BAME Writers' Network
Issue 21 of Gutter Magazine is out now and was created in partnership with Scottish BAME Writers’ Network. Guest Editors Alycia Pirmohamed & Jay G Ying introduce the issue:
We first approached Gutter Magazine about the possibility of a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic feature issue almost two years ago. In 2018, alongside Nadine Aisha Jassat, who founded the idea, and Zein Sa’dedin, we asked ourselves whether Scottish literary organisations might be receptive to this simple but radical proposition; not long later, at the Race & Poetry & Poetics conference in Cambridge, we were able to present a panel highlighting our different lived experiences as writers of colour working in Scotland. By nature of the conference, and the critical space it presented, we spoke about tokenisation, a lack of representation and discrimination in UK literary culture and industry. This latest issue of Gutter strives to combat that underrepresentation of BAME writers in Scotland’s publishing world: to show that we are in no way a patchy and negligible population group. As Sean Wai Keung, Guest Poetry Reader, says: “what I love about the work in this issue is seeing the different ways writers have chosen to assert their own identities, experiences, thoughts and narratives. Not as marginalised or separate voices, but rather as level contributors to discourse, forming their own particular spaces on these pages.”
In the intricately crafted “After Two Fridas,” Jassat navigates doubling and wholeness, and, in a way, captures the heart of this feature in her poetry: ‘I tell my selves that I am mine to paint.’ Whatever selves we inhabit, however our identities might splinter or fragment as we navigate how we belong, art becomes a way of connection – a way of resistance. In “Body Double” Amelia Zhou is in conversation with Jassat, suggesting those inhabited selves might be a kind of separation: ‘Who moves closer to the distance you are carrying.’ Whilst in Beth Frieden’s “Iogh/Yew,” they might be represented as two metaphorical rooms, the window between them thinned by ‘na tuinn / a’briseadh nam bhroinn.’ These poems are spaces to halve, to reflect, to mirror, and to, eventually, accrue. We see this beautifully illustrated in how language, translation, and symbolism triangulate into vivid, accumulated meaning in the concrete poem, “Firestarters,” by Hao Wang and nick-e-melville.
We hoped to continue Gutter’s celebrated history of supporting international literature. In collaboration with the award-winning Charco Press, we have an excerpt from A Musical Offering by the Argentinian writer Luis Sagasti, translated by Fionn Petch. Even from just the few first lines, ‘The theatre is full. No admission has been charged, for the simple reason that no one has any money,’ we knew we wanted to share this piece which masterfully weaved together the intertwined legacies of classical music and fascism. Other stories reach into that acute political space in order to bring out memories of journeys travelled or journeys which can no longer be taken, such as Ibrahaim, the queer refugee in Andrés N Ordorica’s ‘The Urchin’, or the three Venezuelan voices which explore migration and borders in Sherezade García Rangel’s ‘Ni Allá Ni Acá’.
In our interview with Jackie Kay and Jess Brough, Kay stated: “I think of my job as Makar as being a job to reflect the voices of many people.” Later in the interview, Brough mentioned they felt Red Dust Road was written specifically for them, adding “that’s one of the most beautiful things about that book: it just connects with so many people.” Voice and multiplicity become a highlight in Issue 21. Heather H. Yeung’s “Simmerdim,” is delightfully woven: ‘blo th’ strain + brightness breaks to calm, birds,’ and threads into the mathematical: ‘[each year / there’s λ’s / more lengthy / than you re / call ].’ When we think of wavelengths, we think of movement, oscillation, and rhythm, all which come together in poems like “Nostalgia in Vibe” by Jakky Bankong-Obi’ or “Dear Mother, –” by Sneha Subramaian Kanta: ‘A woman can be a wilderness: a dark sea with the / uproar of tides.’ Voice reverberates powerfully, too, in collaborative works that unfold as a chorus. “Go Towards the Door,” a poem by the Maryhill Integration Network, and written as part of workshops with Open Book Reading, echoes in generations: ‘We have many words for mothers / Many words for grandmothers, my love. / Nyanya, Aji, Bibi.’
We wanted to showcase the range and innovation of writing styles, forms and subject matters across a diverse representation of contemporary BAME writers; it was important for us to include writing that occupied the cutting-edge and innovative. In Shola von Reinhold’s excerpt from their forthcoming novel LOTE, an absurd party satire quickly descends and disintegrates, formally and linguistically, into a ‘Chronology of Unfurling’. In Nat Raha’s “from [9x9]/apparitions,” a combination of disrupted verse, exacting pauses, and precise line-breaks defines (and simultaneously defies) the form’s musical pattern: ‘chroma / -tic , brittle , split, flaked w / out.’ Amanda Thompson, the author of A Scots Dictionary of Nature, explores the various metaphors and languages of the crow in “Craw Sunday,” a crystalline essay which reminds us of the need for greater diversity in Scottish nature writing.
In our communities, like the Scottish BAME Writers Network, many writers have expressed how Issue 21 presents an opportunity – a welcoming, a celebration, a radical step towards change. We believe that this step must be enacted across the entire cultural arts sector, specifically in those areas which have so far seen little change, such as literary criticism and reviews. We are honoured to include six reviews by critics of colour in this issue; the books reviewed range from the Booker International Winner Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi to Poetry Book Society recommendation Split by Juana Adcock. As we reflect on this issue, we believe activist and writer Raman Mundair says it best in her piece, “The Fragile White Body, Censorship and Resistance.” In reference to the Resisting whiteness conference, she writes: “[this] is a rare moment of Black and Brown voices being prioritised in an infinite sea of whiteness.” That feels parallel to what we tried to achieve in this Issue: inviting non-BAME writers and readers but prioritising and championing BAME voices.
Overall, we hope BAME writers continue to submit to Gutter, resolutely and fervently. That is the whole point - to showcase us here and now so that our work is seen, appreciated, and valued; so that our writing remains a permanent fixture in issues to come and, more broadly, in the world of Scottish publishing.
- by Alycia Pirmohamed and Jay G Ying
Scottish BAME Writers Network
Gutter magazine depends on subscribers. Subscribe now to receive issue 21 as your first delivery
Come celebrate issue 21 with launch parties at Aye Write (Glasgow) and Lighthouse Books (Edinburgh)
Open Book Reading works with Maryhill Integration Network. Photo by Marjorie Lotfi Gill
Subscriber copies being packed
Twice a year Gutter takes over the Post Office
L-R Guest Editors Jay G Ying, Alycia Pirmohamed, and Guest Poetry Reader Sean Wai Keung
