In this episode based on the book chapter called TURN, I am joined by Zakir Hossain Khokan, a poet and author, also a fellow migrant worker to explore the conversation of gratitude and renewal.
"When I was thinking of who I would like to have a conversation with on this shade of love on loss and turnarounds, I immediately thought of my friend - Zakir Hussain Khokan. I first met Zakir a good number of years back when he attended one of the Hush Teabar community sessions. Zakir was a journalist in Dhaka Bangladesh before he left for Singapore to join the construction industry here in 2003, that's 18 years ago! He won the first Migrant Workers' Poetry Competition, and became a strong voice for the migrant community. He was featured in the media, at the Singapore Writers' Festival, at TEDx Singapore, and on other platforms but he wanted to do more for the scene. Monir Ahmod and you edited Migrant Tales (2017), an anthology of poems by migrant Bengali poets in Singapore. He also started to establish a migrant writers community called 'Migrant Writers of Singapore' and started 'Carnival of Poetry', a monthly reading session with the support of Sing Lit Station which brings local and migrant poets together. He said poetry is like oxygen for him!"
Join us as we discuss gratitude, resilience, loss and turnarounds, and how both of us experienced losing everything, to finding ourselves in the end.
Also, come find out why the splendid Tapia shrub is paired with this shade of love in the book!
MY INVITATION TO YOU:
How different would your life be if you focus on what you have instead of what you don't have?
What is your "have" list?
RESOURCES
Migrant Writers of Singapore, One Bag, One Book, Migrant Workers Photography Festival - 2nd edition in Sep https://www.giving.sg/singlit-station/onebagonebook
Migrant Library Singapore https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Library/Migrant-Library-Singapore-151309755494905/
Dibashram https://dibashrammock.wordpress.com/
Welcome in My Backyard https://www.wimby.sg/
TWC2 https://twc2.org.sg/
HealthServe https://www.healthserve.org.sg/our-centres/
