the poems are good, they really are. (O Firefly! / Have you also engaged your daughter to be wed? / Does the fear of dowry / burn in your belly too as fire?) but unease too, for the unspoken reproach of the organisers is that we’ve long dehumanised them, our migrant workers, and now this, now this should show you how wrong you are. and of course, what one can’t help thinking of is ishiguro’s never let me go, in which the clones are encouraged to make art to “prove” their humanity; also pratchett’s snuff, where the way to convinced human beings that goblins were a sentient species was to have the goblin girl play the harp movingly at the opera house.the point is: we shouldn’t need to have to make this point at all.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird