Welcome to Third Space, which was set up to celebrate, showcase and support South Asian poetry, to inspire new writers and build poets’ connections.
British South Asian poetry is flourishing, but it is still not being amply reflected in mainstream publishing, on poetry courses or through poetry societies. Third Space has been set up by poet and artist Suman Gujral with an eye on filling this gap.
Launched with an anthology and events during South Asian Heritage Month 2024, Third Space aims to provide a platform for the showcasing and promotion of South Asian poetry, in order to inspire new poets as well as bringing together more established poets.
In collaboration with the award-winning independent publisher Renard Press, an open call for submissions went out in April 2024, leading towards the publication of a volume of South Asian poetry in July 2024, and a second open call was announced in March 2025, building towards a second anthology, Remembrance, in August 2025.
We are now fundraising in order to pay the poets and judges of the second anthology a fee, as we believe strongly in the project going ahead, and in paying those involved in the journey.
About Suman
Suman Gujral is a multidisciplinary artist working with print, textile and poetry. Her parents were forcibly displaced by the 1947 Partition of India, and came to the UK seventeen years later. Her history as a child of refugees and immigrants underlies her practice, and community engagement, inclusivity, compassion and joy are central to her work. She reflects on the cycle of war and displacement, rooted in colonial action, which un-homed her parents, through visual and written works, and is awed by the human ability to survive – thrive, even – in the aftermath of traumatic events. She strongly believes that art should be part of our everyday lives rather than a white-space experience.
How it started
My parents brought me to the UK in 1965, as a three-year-old, and we lived in Southall – known then as ‘Little India’, as many immigrants from the subcontinent had initially moved there. This was a happy time. I was part of a warm Sikh community, going to the Gurdwara every Saturday, playing with other brown children, shopping in South Asian stores, and watching Hindi films at the cinema. In 1971, when I was nine, my parents moved to Hastings. There were only a couple of other South Asian families in the town, and for the first time I realised that I was ‘brown’. The years in Southall, luckily, had given me a strong sense of identity, but now I had a sense of being an outsider.
The thirteenth century poet Rumi wrote, ‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you.’ In 2020, around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement, I found this out for myself, when someone I had known for a long time openly attacked me on Facebook when I spoke about colonial history in India, accusing me of being illiterate and posting ‘counterculture crap’. I felt isolated. I received no support from people who saw the post – which hurt me. I was shocked and upset, and for a while I stopped going to my studio.
I had recently found a mentor, and he believed my version of the story without question, even though he barely knew me, and offered me his unconditional support. The day after this conversation, which I can only describe as profoundly healing, I wrote my first poem in forty-four years. I have not stopped writing since.
The light that came from the wound is my poetry. It has enhanced my practice and allowed me to communicate on so many more levels. As I spoke up about what had happened through my poems, and as more and more people who I hadn’t previously known stepped up and shared their stories, I realised how important it is to create a safe, inclusive, compassionate space. This is what the Third Space project is about, and I hope you will join me in it.
by Suman Gujral,
April 2025