Retrieved via the Wayback Machine. Originally posted by addytorials

“There are out there more ways than walkers, more dreams than dreamers, more love than lovers”

Shamshad Khan doesn’t just read poetry. She makes love to your head.

Her performance poetry is made psycho-sensual foreplay by every intonation, every pause, short breath and gesture. Her presence on stage will seize any warm-blooded literati. And maybe others as well. As she herself admits, she is surprised by her cool candour in front of an audience while she is instantly self-conscious facing a camera.

Oh, how she holds her audience. Her gaze unfailing, her posture soaking in every emotion behind her words, she makes your pulse race every time she reiterates, “there are out there, more ways than who can say”. And she is immediately endearing and kind and inquisitive as she essays her thoughts to a Nigerian pot.

Akshay puts it down quite simply to her crisp Manchester accent. He is obviously referring to the ‘orgasmic’ quality of her voice. But surely, that can’t be all there is to her! After the reading, somebody walked up to her and said, “you have proved that words are not important”. Imagine her state of shock. And in that tiny instant of visible recoil, she is far beyond just a crisp Manchester accent.

Shamshad Khan is a poet. And an excellent one at that. Her art in performance and in verse is practised and perfected.

It is a colossal misfortune that she graced the stage for only an hour today, the 11th of Feb at the D. S. Library Garden.