A Nomadic Poetics Manifesto
About Jeehan:
Jeehan Ashercook is an early career researcher with a doctorate in Creative Writing obtained from the University of Glasgow. Her research theorises and experiments with a nomadic poetics. In doing so, she explores classical poetic forms and the contemporary relationship between migration, liminality, and diasporic identity.
About Jeehan’s Research:
A nomadic poetics is shaped by the rigours of movement. This movement arises out of an existential necessity and ensures survival within adverse environments such as the desert. Given ancient cultures, nomadic movement was driven by the search for water and pasture. Here, nomads often followed asterisms to map out the landscape and mark the seasons (e.g., the red star Arcturus signified advent of spring). The spiral is a nomadic symbol of movement dictated by seasonal cycles. The showcase therefore features a rotating art installation where spiralling text at the centre of desert landscapes by day and night outlines a nomadic poetics manifesto. This lyrically sums up key aspects characterising a nomadic form of poetry. The spiral is also a palimpsestic symbol. A multi-layered map alongside the installation further demonstrates nomadic movement as a palimpsest tracing journeys across space and time. The cartographic overlays demonstrate ancient border-free landscapes of South West Asia that nomads had marked by their regional features as well as recent border states drawn up by the 1923 Sykes-Picot agreement during the French and British colonial project. A final overlay is added to the palimpsest that lyrically outlines the poet’s role as a representative wandering figure. Overall, the showcase offers an interactive installation to highlight the movement-oriented aspects of a nomadic poetics.
A nomadic poetics is lyrical, personal but also collective, the personal is a collective, a relational network, details of ever-extending movement unfolding in constant present tense, the future transpires with flux, it is non-chronological, it is in-between, open-ended, ambiguous, non-narrative, a mirage of multiplicity, polythematic, polyvocal, composite, as lengthy as the caravan stretches between dunes, and circular as day and night, and the seasons.
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