26 Connections at the Bloomsbury Festival, London (October 2024)
As an alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets programme, Megha was paired with poet Rishi Dastidar to collaborate on a piece around the theme “human.kind” which would then be illustrated by a visual artist from The Lettering Arts Trust. Rishi and Megha produced a specular poem called, “What Does Day 2 Look Like?” inspired by their political conversations around various elections taking place in 2024.

Their creation diary from the project is available on the festival website here.

Annet Stirling created the work, “Self Care Hack” below, inspired by the poem.

What does day 2 look like?

We were looking for a shipwreck
in a wormhole commonwealth.

We are told! A border has been crossed, 
to a land called Better.

They’re careful not to define permanence here,
cautious optimism washed away by hard water.

In duplicate vaults we place dreams 
of what could have been.

Self-care hack: take the self out, just care. 
An eye for an eye will make us blind – 87% guaranteed.

Please: the refrain is broken. 
Mostly we appear silent, like endless blue waters.

The context is the way we fucking pop.
When we speak, it is with the kindness of fire. 


When we speak, it is with the kindness of fire.
The context is the way we fucking pop. 

Mostly we appear silent, like endless blue waters.
Please: the refrain is broken. 

An eye for an eye has made us blind. 87% guaranteed
self-care hack: take the self out, just care 

for what could have been.
In duplicate vaults we place dreams, 

cautious optimism washed away by hard water.
They’re careful not to define permanence here,

in a land called Better.
We are told. A border has been crossed, 

in a wormhole commonwealth.
We were looking for a shipwreck.

I Could Think of Verse by Garfield D’Souza (February 2024)
The poem Dishes from How To Share The World was featured on Garfield D’Souza’s podcast and YouTube channel

Collaboration with The Tapi Project (November 2023)

Megha was commissioned to write a poem to accompany the launch of The Tapi Project’s new track, Mehsoos, in 2023. They performed it alongside the band at Gilly’s Fandom in Bangalore.

Chapter 1 in How To Share The World (October 2023)
A fundraiser anthology of feminist poetry for One Future Collective

Megha contributed the first chapter, on Joy and Healing, to this anthology in 2023. It includes 23 of their poems, written over the past decade, through university and beyond, on friendship and other relationships.

Issue 11 of harana poetry (August 2023)
Arithmetic and The Names of Things

Tributaries zine by The Queer Muslim Project as part of the Queer Writers’ Room (June 2023)
Megha was a facilitator and mentor on this programme, working with young, queer writers from across South Asia. The programme was supported by the U.S. Consulate General, Mumbai.

Featured on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb with Ian McMillan as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival (September 2022)
In conversation with Fred D’Augiar, Dzifa Benson, Alvin Pang, Nick Makoha, and Amani Saeed

Language is a Queer Thing Show at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival (September 2022)
Supported by Verve Poetry Festival, The Queer Muslim Project, and the British Council’s India x UK Together Season of Culture

Language is a Queer Thing anthology published with Verve Poetry Press (2022)
You can purchase the anthology here.

Queerabad’s Tilt, Issue #4, Of Pandemic Proportions (2022)
You can purchase an issue here.

Irshaad Poetry’s, Choti Si Aasha (2021)
A fundraiser anthology for The Dhan Foundation

Notes, Cambridge (2016 and 2017)
Issues 38 (Notes on Travel) and 40 (Notes x Love After Dark)

Chitmahal

Chitmahal is the Bengali word
I know that mahal means palace but I want to know more
Google translate tells me chit means ‘oddity’ or ‘eccentricity’
When I ask about mahal, it says palace of course, but also ‘district’ and ‘house’

Chitmahal translates to enclave
Or eccentric district really

But we call it exclave

When we are stuck within soils that our not our own
trying to make homes in pockets
like that tiny pocket within the pocket on the front right of your jeans

21 of the 102 chitmahals of India in Bangladesh
had ‘counter enclaves’ in them
Bangladeshes within Indias within Bangladesh

one of these had a ‘third order enclave’
the only one in the world
it’s an India in a Bangladesh in an India in Bangladesh

phew

Here
it is not as complicated

Just me, a little India, within the UK, within the EU
(for now)

Your arms around me are the border
Creating an exclave of homeland within their confines
A warm circle of belonging in this cold city of concrete walls
concrete people
safety is the boundaries between our skins blurring

Theatre Peckham, Prompt for Emerging Writers Programme (2021)

Multilingual/Multicultural

speaking two cultures,
easier than two languages –
always tongue-twisted.

Barbican Young Poets, Anthologies (2016 and 2017)

The Body Sonata podcast, a collaboration with Post Everything (2016)

Combining the sonic signature of the Barbican with the unique voices of the young creatives making work inside the building, The Body Sonata podcast deals with borders and scale. From the barriers between blood vessels to the line we draw between earth and space, the Barbican Young Poets discuss their own relationship with the world around them in collaboration with Post Everything, whose members are Barbican Young Poets alumni. Featuring poets: Megha Harish Gabriel Akamo, Cameron Holleran, Anna Kahn and Eleanor Penny.

Feature in City Matters (June 2017)

Arboretum

In seed time, learn of home
the tastes and smells and sounds
all imbibed while you are just a collection of chromosomes birth.
the sky weeps, rain clouds
for eyes and your ground its soles.
so they name you megha. You grow your roots
deep into bodies of soil, watered by their souls
they teach you kindness, it shoots
out of you, flowering in the city.
As a sapling you are uprooted. Nomad
green, taken across blue eternity,
you perfect the technique of breathing above land.
Away from your family eden.
In Tree Time, Learn of Freedom.

Poetry Booth, Session 2.8 (July 2017)
Lost Languages