The Poetry of Therapy

Ahead of the launch of her debut poetry collection, Sanah Ahsan talks to Shweta Shiware about religion, queerness, race, and above all, finding meaning in "love".

LIBERATION and community psychologist, writer, poet, facilitator and educator". These words make up Sanah Ahsan's Instagram bio. Appearing on a Zoom call from her Hertfordshire flat in a plaid white shirt and thick-rimmed glasses, the 33-year-old takes a minute to deliberate on my first question: "Outside the many skins you wear, who is Sanah Ahsan, the person?"

"Hmm, that's a big question," she smiles. "I'm still evolving as a person. I find a lot of meaning through my work but also my identity as a queer, gender-fluid Muslim born in the UK. All these different threads traverse around the question: How can I embody love in my work, and in my relationships with people and God?" She speaks of "love" not in the greatest romance-of-all kind of way but as a verb as Gloria Jean Watkins, a black feminist writer known by her pen name "bell hooks", would approve. "[Hooks's] writing insists on a deceptively simple idea that to love is to act, and to act is to love, and show up in the fullness of our humanity."

Talking to Ahsan is an unusual combination of contemplation and enthusiasm. She thinks intently, takes time to launch her thoughts, which have clearly burst open from some deep part of herself. Her interest in liberation psychology began with her own experiences with "pain and suffering" as a young person in a queer gender non-conforming body raised in a Pakistani household. Puncturing Ahsan's childhood were also memories of her family who had settled in the UK after the Partition, which had left unacknowledged hurt in its wake.