In June, I took a deep breath and signed up for my first ever open-mic night. The event was Late Night Lit: Collisions and was part of the 2017 Emerging Writers Festival. The headliners were amazing, which didn't help my nerves, but the organisers and the crowd were all so warm that I didn't completely lose my voice before I went up.
I sang a bit of Peera Ho, a Punjabi Sufi song that I've loved since I first heard it around 20 years ago, and then I segued into a multilingual poem in English, Urdu and French about identity and language.
Open mic performance of 'Suno/Listen' at Late Night Lit: Collisions, which was part of the 2017 Emerging Writers' Festival. Nadia's poem is responding to the question "which texts inspire you?" The song that Nadia sang a snippet of is called 'Peera Ho'. Recorded 21 June 2017 in Melbourne, Australia.