My mind superimposed Chakswari and Mirpur, like a mask, onto the pastoral painting that provides PBLJ8 with its cover image. It’s a Birmingham painting though, a Midlands landscape—one that has disappeared along with the pastoral in poetry since we reside now and think with the city or the ignorant suburb (to borrow a little from Fisher and Abse). When this journal was founded three years ago in the buildings around Eastside Park in Birmingham, I was thinking about the urban pastoral, of trying to regain some of the green we’d been disinherited from.

—Editorial, PBLJ8, Naush Sabah

C O N T E N T S

Editor

Naush Sabah

Prose

Nabeela Ahmed on writing in Pahari • Sarala Estruch, Gita Ralleigh, and Rushika Wick on South Asian women’s poetry collective Kinara • Kit Fan reviews Lurex, Shoulder Tap, and warm blooded things • Sana Goyal reviews Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head • John Greening on Englishness • Amaan Hyder reviews Limbic and Lost, Hurt, or in Transit Beautiful • Waqas Khwaja reviews Ghalib: A Wilderness at my Doorstep: A Critical Biography • Gregory Leadbetter on poetry and the mask • Camille Ralphs interviews Christopher Reid and Fred D’Aguiar • Shrukria Razaei on preserving and translating Hazaragi poetry • Declan Ryan reviews Field Requiem and To Star the Dark • Eva Salzman reviews The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill • David Wheatley reviews The Citizen • Jeremy Wikeley on ecopoetry

Poets

Suna Afshan • Nabeela Ahmed • Tammy Armstrong • Alison Brackenbury • Jo Bratten • Lewis Buxton • Fred D’Aguiar • Adrian B. Earle • Sarala Estruch • Rebecca Goss • Kathryn Gray • Khaled Hakim • Ramona Herdman • Ibrahim Hirsi • Olivia Hodgson • Nicholas Hogg • Amaan Hyder • Zannah Kearns • Anna Kisby • Charlotte Shevchenko Knight • Zaffar Kunial • Gita Ralleigh • Christopher Reid • Sharif Saeedi • Jacqueline Saphra • Martha Sprackland • Matthew Stewart • Rory Waterman • Sarah Westcott • David Wheatley • Rushika Wick