Gif for Talk

CARVED VOICES

INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE CELEBRATING CREATIVE RESISTANCE

i.Editorial Conversation :Women who Envision

1.POETRY: The Contours of meby Sonali Mohapatra

3.SHORT ESSAY: SHAME: A Revolutionary emotionby Shantashree Mohanty

6.POETRY: QUEERby Anahita Sarabhai

14.ART WORK: Narcissus in Denialby Djuna Lize Croon

16.POETRY: A woman's sanity is a freaky thingby Shantashree Mohanty

18.SNIPPET: Building myself for the male gazeby Sonali Mohapatra

Project Nós Por Todas: Exploring the Female Body as a confrontational Space. By Photographer Camilla Cavalcante

35.TRAVELOGUE: To be is to travelby Juhi Rajhans

Women Who

Envision.

In our present issue, we at Carved Voices have decided to go a bit more organic and instead of writing a wellthought out scripted editorial for you, we decided to showcase to you an honest conversation between our founders Sonali Mohapatra, a theoretical physicist and Shantashree Mohanty, a lawyer, whose common love for poetry and common hunger for social change led to Carved Voices.

CARVED VOICES |i

The EditorialConversation.

Shantashree: Remember we tried to write a poem together when we were really little?

Sonali: Dude, we wrote a book together when we were 7. Wait, it was feminist wasn’t it? Something about Barbie and beauty pageants and stuff! :O Haha, we were weird 7 year olds! I am sure that book is somewhere at home, it would be fun to look at it again, no?

Shantashree : Exactly! i think your Uncle sending you Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was a big deal, sort of a turning point for us. Our reading habits grew after that.

Sonali: Haha, yeah, my Ginny :* :* ;)

Shantashree : OMG, do you remember that poem Ginny wrote for harry when she started crushing on him? His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad…

Sonali: Gosh, i know, i thought it great at the time :P Sune, we should get on the second issue no? Some people i met told me that the first issue looked great, it looked very professional.

Shantashree : Ya? i think we should. It's been crazy at work for both of us these past couple of months. But we should get back to it ASAP. By the way, tu gote poem lekhithilu Ginny paeen…and dedicated it to me. i'm trying to recall it..

Sonali: oh? Mane paka!!

Sonali: In the meantime, eita dekhe, was writing this now:

Still from the 2013 film La vie d'Adèle

QUEER

by Anahita Sarabhai

My queer self has been mislabelled Miss taken for many things since birth She has been assumed Straight Away to be the same perfectly. Same.

Who would you say has been a defining part of your life?

I don't really believe there has been one person to be quite honest. In fact the process has involved interactions and experiences shared with a variety of people. People that have often been influential have also been in equal parts disappointing, and it is recognising that that has made a difference.

If you could give a message to other queer individuals out there, what would you say?

Breathe. Pause. Don't be afraid in the face of the world's terror. Look in the mirror with your eyes closed. Listen harder. Harder still. It's okay to be confused, not have the answers, not know who you are, never just be one version of yourself, be constantly changing. Grow. Stand up taller everyday. Wake up ready to fight back. Take the time to cry, scream and laugh. Dance and sing to beautiful but also stupid music. Make stuff, and share it.

What kind of boxes have you already freed yourself from, and what kind of boxes are you still struggling with?

I'd like to think it really is an ongoing process that sometimes even involves breaking down the same boxes that seem to build back around you if you aren't paying attention!

A woman's sanity is a freaky thing. Isolated like a private pledge, stripped of shadows, hanging by a string

A woman's sanity is a freaky thing.

A woman's sanity is a shapeshifter scattered all over her bed as she fake smokes for hours deciding what to wear for a room full of snobs and the empty glare of bling

A woman's sanity is a freaky thing.

A woman's sanity lies in periodic sloughing of her womb; crushed under the tyranny of a red dragon taking over every fiber of her being

A Woman'sSanityis aFreakyThing.

By Shantashree Mohanty

A woman's sanity is a freaky thing.

NósPorTodas

Introducing our featured photographer slash artist, "Camila Cavalcante". Camilla is a visual artist from the north-east coast of Brazil, currently settled in the UK. She holds a Masters of the Arts degree from University of Westminster and works for the London School of Photography. Camila was awarded two photography national prizes in her home country and has taken part in over 20 exhibitions and three art residencies in Brazil, the US, Mexico and the UK. Carved Voices caught up to Camilla to learn about her daring project "Nós Por Todas" exploring the contours of courage, sisterhood, feminism, law and photography.

Unabashed

Anchita Addhya

Standing AloneBy: Oli Spleen

With undoubtedly good intentions, my mother had decided it would do her children good to learn manners and be “well spoken” as she put it. She was from a more middle class background than my dad whose father’s family had escaped the slums of London’s East End. Back then the thinking was that an eloquently delivered voice and good etiquette could take you up in the world. Even my dad’s own dad Edwin who had survived this world of poverty as a child, was something of a working class snob who had made many shoddy attempts at rewriting his family history. One example of this could clearly be seen in a photograph of my dad John as a young boy wearing a blazer which his dad had bought him and had badly drawn a crest in chalk on one pocket so that friends of the family or whoever, might be fooled into thinking that John went to a decent school. My dad also told me of hearing about an uncle who had committed suicide by drinking Jeyes Fluid on the banks of the river Thames. I learned that after this incident my grandad

ChokherBali

by Debapriyo Sarkar

A Letter to Kevin Spacey

By: Jess Dyson-Houghton

Dear Kevin Spacey,

To say that I am angry with you is an understatement. Your name comes up in conversation with friends and colleagues when discussing the news. Their disbelieving and somewhat stricken ‘did you hear-?’ tone is drowned out by my fury, my disgust. I don’t mean to do it, don’t meant to ‘be that person’, but I do it nonetheless. I am furious with you, incandescent on numerous levels.

You were always on the periphery of my vision growing up. You had a recognisable voice and face, and yet sometimes I struggled to place you. I know your voice as GERTY in the film Moon, as Hopper in A Bug’s Life. You were there in Se7en, one of my favourite films, and again in The Usual Suspects. L.A Confidential of course also springs to mind. Most recently, I rapped my knuckles with you in Netflix’s series House of Cards and I rooted for you to win despite

Yawp!

By: Jo Bailey

Today I had this word inscribed on my arm in ink, a word important to me for so many reasons. This isn’t short. Perhaps not long, but not short. I'm not the best at brevity but expressing my stories as I need to is important sometimes. I think without my giving the story, I can think of a little handful of people to whom this might be very or vaguely familiar. Is it any more so if I mention Robin Williams or Peter Weir or Ethan Hawke? But this isn't a guessing game. It's a story, and it's mine, so the story I shall tell.

Do you remember the film Dead Poets Society? That heartrending, but heart-filling tale of the lease of life given by literature, of the power of words, and that of wonderful, passionate teaching; of the gravity of a moment, the way in

Still from the 2003 film Lost in Translation

Fenêtres

By: Jack Setford

I am home. I have been staring at this blank page (no longer blank!) for the whole flight, waiting for inspiration. Finally, as I gaze out of the window and see the hazy blue waters of Lac Léman, the mountains blanketed in snow, I know how my journal should begin: I am home. It’s been twenty long years, and now I have returned.

I translated ‘return’ on the plane’s wifi. Je retourne, je rentre, je reviens… Which one is it? Maybe all of them; I can’t remember the difference. Too many words for a single word. It will be good to practise my French. The man sitting next to me is English, so I will have to wait a little longer. He is here on business, a banker or some such. Some attempts were made at conversation shortly after we took off, but it quickly became clear to both of us how boring his profession (nay, his life!) is. I say to both of us, because I am sure it is quite possible to forget how dull your life is on those rare occasions when someone else shows an interest,