PRERANA KUMAR
PROJECTS
sub(VERSE)ive FOR WASAFIRI
A new and exclusive conversation series brought to you by Wasafiri.
Each month, I will be in conversation with a poet releasing a new collection in 2025.
Riotous and unruly, these poets’ collections challenge the limits of the Western lyric, exploring the messy nuances of living in a turbulent world while holding tenaciously onto hope.
Join us as we discuss their inspirations, politics, writing practice, and more.
Guests include Nick Makoha, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Pascale Petit, and Isabelle Baafi
‘Writing the Archive’ is a creative project that interrogates the nature of the archive as a problematic space of procurement, violence and misinformation, emblematic of a colonial legacy. Inspired by collections in the British Museum, Fahad Al-Amoudi, Lydia Hounat and Prerana Kumar created work that blurs historical fiction with the poetics of Ethiopian, Indian and Algerian literary traditions.
I worked with the Asia Department to write poems that respond to the museum’s collection of South Asian Mughal paintings. My work explores narratives of queer intimacy between women depicted in the paintings in an attempt to foreground companionship and community as resistance against heteronormative colonial inheritance and repression of everyday patriarchy.
DIGITAL POET-IN-RESIDENCE FOR THE POETRY BUSINESS
As part of their ‘Apart Together’ digital project for 2021, The Poetry Business hosted a digital residency.
As part of my residency, I explored rituals (cultural/somatic/intergenerational or otherwise) as a conduit of intimacy, tenderness, and connection.
‘UNTOLD STORIES’ FOR ENGLISH HERITAGE’
Untold Stories explored the hidden histories and contemporary resonances of English Heritage sites. We were asked to reflect on the history, fabric and atmosphere of our sites, using their creativity to explore what lies beneath the surface of history’s prevailing narratives – stories that have gone untold or people who have been forgotten. You can find the digital anthology with my poem here.
PRERANA KUMAR 