HSS-LUMS Organise a Reading with Kyla Pasha

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HSS-LUMS Organise a Reading with Kyla Pasha

March 29, 2012

Courtesy: Jennifer Mitchell

On Friday, March 16, 2012, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) at LUMS held a reading and conversation with poet Kyla Pasha.

Kyla was born in Islamabad and studied in U.S. She received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Creative Writing at Oberlin College and a Masters degree of International Studies: Comparative Religion at UW Seattle. This mixture of experiences comes through in her work.

She began the reading session with a poem called To Pack a Boat ,which she described as being similar to the more formal style of poetry written in England that she was brought up reading in school. Her writing later evolved to the more abstract, expressive language she learned to create at Oberlin. An example of this is her poem "Post-it Notes on Your Door", which is a collection of Post-it note messages streamed together.

The fun thing about this type of poetry, she joked, is that you never really know when it ends, since the aim of American poetry is often to be so surreal that the poem hides behind itself. In contrast, she pointed out that Urdu poetry is all right there in front of you, “gorgeous and beautiful.”

The language Kyla herself recited was at times so beautiful that the audience literally gasped, “Wow.” Though she may have been taught to make aspects of her poetry hard to follow, it didn’t seem like there was any way to hide her talent with words and rhythms – which made for a wonderful reading and a great way to start the weekend.