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Words came first.

Whether we’re talking cave paintings, fire-dances or love, ever since the dawn of humanity, we have expressed ourselves in words. Writing came later, and from the beginning, it, too, was an expression of our creativity. Images into symbols, into images. The Persians invented the novel, several thousand years ago, and today, every film-script, every song (as well as every book), more or less, starts with someone sitting down at a screen and tapping, Fade in…

Among the South Asian community in Glasgow, anger, love and the need to tell a story are working wonders on the writers who have been emerging over the past few years. Various projects, including (among others) the Libraries-organised Speaking in Tongues and Kisqa Rasta readings of 1997-98, the CRC Calendar Poetry Competition of 1999 and the work of the Pollokshields Writers’ Group are indicative of a growing and powerful trend among people of minority ethnic origins to pick up the pen. People begin to write for a multitude of reasons, and publication may be only one part of that. Taking control of one’s inner life may be the most potent reason. Desperation might be another; the Word against the Abyss. Write, or else crack up. And as the song goes, there is no time for crackin up, believe me, friend …

To engage in a dialectic of the imagination, is to begin to explore a broader dialectic relating to the power relationships of our everyday lives. The power of money and patriarchy, and the manner in which we sell (or are unable to sell) our labour, both within and outwith our own houses - these are just a few of the themes which are currently being explored in the Pollokshields Writers’ Group. And all this is through the volition of the writers, themselves. There is no pre-determined agenda. From rumbustious comedy sketches, to stories and dramas of urban confrontation, to poetic spiritual awakenings, the act of expression is both political and physical. By its nature, writing is a lone experience, and yet, perhaps in counterpoint, writers need to meet with one another, to share the physicality of language which is writing. Make no mistake, writing is dangerous, both for the soul and for established orders. Why else would dictators - either of the mahal or of the bethak - attempt to filter that which issues from the head of a pen? Why else would they attempt to buy the hand that writes it? And sometimes, of course, they succeed. We see much creative talent, wasted in glitzy irrelevance. That’s why new voices are constantly required. Without fresh voices, we are dead. Our tongues are our hope.

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Thankfully, the Pollokshields Writers’ Group is a donga of tongues. The atmosphere during meetings veers from the exciting to the profound and is always poetic and sociable. The two main aims are a constant striving for honesty on the page and the search for the most effective way of communicating. Eighty-five per cent of the group are women, and about half the group are of South Asian origin. Issues such as love, racism, drug abuse, urban living, fantasy, humour, childhood and domestic abuse are just a few of the areas which have been explored through the writing. But it is not a therapy group. The styles of writing are as varied as the individual writers. Face-to-Face: Different Visions, Common Voices was an exhibition of the group’s textual and visual work at the Mitchell and Pollokshields Libraries, respectively, during the summer of 2000.

Thankfully, the Pollokshields Writers' Group is a donga of tongues. The atmosphere during meetings veers from the exciting to the profound and is always poetic and sociable. The two main aims are a constant striving for honesty on the page and the search for the most effective way of communicating. Eighty-five per cent of the group are women, and about half the group are of South Asian origin. Issues such as love, racism, drug abuse, urban living, fantasy, humour, childhood and domestic abuse are just a few of the areas which have been explored through the writing. But it is not a therapy group. The styles of writing are as varied as the individual writers. Face-to-Face: Different Visions, Common Voices was an exhibition of the group's textual and visual work at the Mitchell and Pollokshields Libraries, respectively, during the summer of 2000. A swathe of the group's work was published earlier this year in Nomad magazine. Work has also appeared in the book, New Writing Scotland, which is a high-profile volume published annually by the Association for Scottish Literary Studies. Some months ago, off their own bat, two of the writers set up a community magazine, Awaz of Scotland. Voice of Scotland. Another is applying for funding to get a collection of his Scots Gaelic short stories published. Another has had work broadcast on the BBC. The Group do frequent public readings, for instance, recently appearing at Glasgow's Millennium Mela and at the Intermedia Gallery. Guest writers, such as Sanjeev Kohli, Jackie Kay and Chris Dolan, have come and shared their valuable skills and experience with the Group.

This is not merely a fad. This is a zeigeist. A movement of the mind. Leila Aboulela, the Sudanese writer living in Aberdeen (author of an excellent novel called, The Translator), recently won the McCain Short Story Prize, and Jackie Kay, who is of African-Caribbean origin, has picked up several awards for her work. The multimedia, high-profile Wish I Was Here project (book, exhibition and traveling workshops) which was launched at the Edinburgh Book Festival in autumn 2000, draws on work by writers and artists from Scotland's Minority Ethnic communities. The Connecting Cultures/Threads in the Tartan exhibition and festival drew on the literary arts as well as on various performing and visual media, in a display of work from Scotland's multifarious communities. Writing by people form Minority Ethnic groups within Scotland is approaching a watershed. There's a lot going on, north of radford - though you wouldn't know it from reading the English Asian Press.

The arts flow through people's lives. The Word validates us as individuals and as a community. Reading work which relates to our own experiences gives those experiences validity. It makes them real. It makes us matter. The confidence of a community, and of the individuals within that community, grows with each word we bleed, and the process is infectious! Other people think: I could do that. Yes, you can. It's Scotland. It's 2001. The Creative Channel is well-and-truly open.

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