The Crack in the Ceiling: Writing the 'I' of the British-Pakistani Experience in the Fourth Space

Akhtar, Qudsia

Abstract

This thesis is a creative and critical study of contemporary poetry and poetics using innovative practice to focus on British-Pakistani experience whilst exploring the concept of the Fourth Space (Parmar et al, 2018), an alternate space proposed for the writer of colour to rise above fixed binaries of self and other in the lyric and to refute the divide between the two prominent writing scenes of mainstream and avant-garde, giving rise to an alternative scene of critical and creative belonging.

The first section outlines the fourth space as conceived poetically in the pamphlet Threads by writers Sandeep Parmar, Bhanu Kapil, and Nisha Ramayya, arguing that the Fourth Space encourages the polyvocality of selves resisting fixed binaries and makes room for the complexities of the lyric ‘I’ and experience. Using Dialogical Self Theory (Hermans et al, 2012) and Nuar Alsadir’s Fourth Person Singular (2018), this thesis proposes how the ‘I’ in the Fourth Space can slip between various I-positions, the past and present, and can be expressed as both communal and individual whilst hosting the intricacies of experience. There then follows studies of the poetry of contemporary South-Asian, Muslim writers – Hafsah Aneela Bashir, Jamal Mehmood, Rakhshan Rizwan, Alycia Pirmohamed, Sascha Akhtar, and Kazim Ali – in light of the Fourth Space and with reference to their own poetics. These accounts explore how each writer’s resistance comes to inhabit and address contemporary creative and critical concerns such as marking the expression of experience on their own terms, counteracting lyric violence, the critical reception of their verse, and the inferred expectations of tokenisation and authentic narratives. Extracts of the interview transcripts are placed alongside critical readings with my own poetics, thinking through some of the common threads evoked in our exchanges. Collectively and individually, this arrangement marks a dialogue between the writers, their work, and my poetics – cementing our shared resistance in the Fourth Space.

The Crack in the Ceiling is a work of poetry, poetics and a journey wandering in the Fourth Space. It explores the ways in which innovative practice can address the creative and cultural challenges of British-Pakistani experience whilst maintaining a soluble expression of the ‘I’. This ‘I’ is neither self-effacing nor fixed. It explores and presents a variety of peripheral voices, such as the Churail whilst proposing formal strategies that draw upon and exploit intertextuality and line length to evoke the fracture of selves. It also presents a central image of a crack in the ceiling which evokes a double-edged instability and openness. These voices and the central, unified ‘I’ take on the positions of outsiders within a wider panorama that proposes a fourth sight able to weave itself in and out of experiences. The poetic voice is equal parts creative and critical and becomes an act of knotting and unknotting outlined in the circularity of the Fourth Space in Threads. The sequence draws upon imagery of a surge through its use of the wave, fire, and the swelling of the Churail’s physical appearance as a premediated eruption through the crack of both the individual subconscious and the collective historical conflict of the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857. The subject matter reflects upon a separation and disassociation from the self, identity, gender, God, and nation. I think of the Fourth Space as one of performance where the ‘I’ is able to slip through selves, images, and forms of address whilst anticipating the eventual collapse of that ceiling.

Citation

Akhtar, Q. (2024). The Crack in the Ceiling: Writing the 'I' of the British-Pakistani Experience in the Fourth Space. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 10, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 18, 2026
• Award Date: Jul 17, 2024