On the evening of Sunday, May 24th, the Human Rights Club welcomed guest poet Zainab Zahra Sayed for an evening of poetry and spoken word performance. All in attendance were deeply moved by Ms. Sayed's presentation, which featured original works that focused on identity, human rights issues, Pakistan -- Ms. Sayed's home country -- and personal relationships. Ms. Sayed also relayed stories of working in Pakistan this past year with families and victims of the Peshawar school shooting, and discussed her own creative processes as well as the use of spoken word performance as both a method of expression and activism.
Ms. Sayed is currently working on a manuscript which will weave the history of the Pakistani Partition with personal narrative in an attempt to reconcile memory and the act of remembering. We look forward to following her work and hope to welcome her back to Portsmouth Abbey in the future.
(Photo caption: Ms. Zainab Zahra Sayed, left, with Human Rights Club President Zoe Butler '16)