Author Note: Imran Khan
Imran Khan is the author of “Lily of Quito,” a poem that appeared in The Ex-Puritan Issue 41: Spring 2018. Here, Khan shares some of the inspiration for the piece.
An old lady hanging her wedding dress in a theatre entrance, a kid dressed as a pilgrim in a class of pop stars and superheroes, a crowd rushing to kiss a wooden foot. The first things I think about when I sit down to write are the absurd images I’ve encountered that have stuck. My process involves confronting the meaning behind images and scenes that, in the first instance provoke humor, but have an immense subtext. These images often come from first-hand experience.
One of my early poems, “Mufty,” features the absurd image of myself having been convinced by my mother to dress as a pilgrim for mufty day. I was five and it was my first opportunity to dress up. As it happened, I was the only pilgrim in a class full of children donning Teletubby heads, Spice Girl dresses and superman capes. I vividly remember the bus ride to school, which is what the poem is about. I often wondered what was behind my mum’s thinking. It may have been that she forgot and that, at the last minute, a pilgrim was all she could put together. Or perhaps my mum genuinely thought there would there’d be more pilgrims. I've never asked her, which is probably an interesting issue in itself.Another poem, “Witness to Marriage,” was inspired by an elderly woman bringing her wedding dress to a theatre showing of the recent royal wedding. The old lady hung the dress at the center of the foyer, amidst all the royal bunting and decorations. My partner works at that theatre and noticed that no one mentioned it, or talked to the lady about it apart from my partner when she had the chance. So, whilst the image of an old wedding dress hung in those surroundings was quite surreal and absurd, there was a poignancy to the scene. I was curious about why the lady brought in the dress, whether she was hoping for any particular conversations to arise and what her thoughts were about her marriage. It was a wonderfully eccentric and endearing thing to do, but I wondered about what was behind it. I felt sad that the dress and the lady were left to themselves and wondered how she’d felt on her journey home.The events that inspired the poem placed in this publication occurred last Easter. On Good Friday, my partner and I took our children to mass. It was the first time I'd ever been to the Good Friday mass. After our priest had carried the crucifix over his shoulder towards the altar, and the whole church had taken turns to kiss the model Jesus’ feet, it struck me how absurd the events would've looked to a non-believer. I thought about the ceremonies and rituals of different religions and how they each had that surface absurdity in common. I then thought about Lily of Quito and how the act of making offerings to a saint in one’s back garden may look absurd to many, but have an immense depth of meaning to others.So, for my writing process, that relationship between silliness and seriousness is massively important. Generally speaking, as a species, I think the interplay between absurdity and our everyday actions is ever present. From something as mundane and subconscious as avoiding cracks on the pavement to the depth of feeling behind our religious rituals, the appearance of absurdity and its inner depths are immensely rife for exploration.
Imran Khan received his degree from SOAS and teaches creative writing around South West England. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Across the Margin, DoveTales, The Seventh Wave, New Asian Writing, and elsewhere. Khan is a previous winner of the Thomas Hardy Award. Find him on Facebook here.
