The world of writing

Away with the birds

Like many of us over the last year, birdsong obsessed poet and human rights lawyer Mona Arshi has become more aware of avian comings and goings in lockdown. As poet in residence at Cley Next the Sea in Norfolk, Mona has been transcribing the sounds, and finding that some of the birds – lapwings and godwits – sang songs that conjured Punjabi words from her childhood that she thought she’d forgotten, having been discouraged to use it during her schooling in the 1970s.

‘Birdsong has no syntax, it. ‘If you just allow yourself to listen to it, you don’t know what’s going to come out. I heard something that I hadn’t heard for decades – the language of my childhood.’