“Through my writing I educate people to try to make a better place for my son to live.”

One of our wonderful poets Josie shares her experience on our Change the Word programme and her poem ‘First Words’ from the Bradford anthology MUD, WATER, MAGIC.

I’m Josie and I’m a poet.

I’m from India and I am proud of my soil and ethnicity. I now live and work and write in Bradford. My inspiration comes from my son Dennis, who has a genetic condition called the Fragile X Syndrome and through my writing I educate people to try to make a better place for him to live.

One evening whilst coming home from work I smelt the aromatics drifting out of “Common Space” … there stood a tall handsome, long braids and smile person handing out leaflets to commuters. After asking what was in the leaflet, he replied, “it a poetry workshop, please do come in and enjoy the introduction of the project with warm delicious Indian food,” Wow! Exploded my brain, I grabbed the leaflet and promise to turn up.

Through Change the Word I learnt that there are so many other forms of poetic technique, local and unheard poet beside the ones you hear about all the time.

I was also able to meet people from across the globe who also express their emotion in a poetry form, learning about their language and culture and listening to their difficult journeys to Bradford.

During the workshops I was interacting with other people, getting to know how to use everyday words to create a meaningful poem, and having the courage and confidence to make mistakes and speak out in the group. In the final show I saw how poetry can be transformed into creative performance to captivate the audience through different form: audio, video, kinetic movement.

I feel proud to be part of this project, we needed something of this scale after 2020 COVID to hear the voice of several who braved their emotion on to the poetic form.

My parents were inspirational, and although self-educated they still made a name for themselves. Through ‘First Words’ I wanted to share and create an everlasting memory of their upbringing and hard work they put into our life. They both are not with us, but I am who I am and where I am seven sea across because of them. I want their hard work to be remembered.

First Words

Born during the Indo-china war
to Indian parents who spoke Hindi 
ate roti with Bhindi

Surrounded by regional community
Learned to speak Marathi, Gujarati
Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil to name a few
Convent school scary as the Queen's English was new

Teased and mocked, ‘You are Kaali’
Laughter filled the class room with taali
To lighten my skin I applied the Haldi
It looked like a jaundice glow

Daru, paisa, Samman, echoed in our home
‘Mein pachaas saal ka ho gya’ chanted by Dad
‘Mere bacche meri shaan hai’ scribbled on his notepad
‘Me no English’ as Gori memsahib asked his name.
A disappointed look.
‘Don’t worry Dad, take this’
A basic Hindi to English translation book

Hola, adios! Guten morgen, wie gehts! Bonjour et voila!
Dhandiya, Holi, Diwali, Idd Mubarak and Christmas
Santa’s gaadi, diya and tara a community spirit.

Born in Bharat, namaste
Tu tum aap, haaji aur naji,
Maa aur papa echoes every minute.