Hair stylist, filmmaker, and writer Sapna Bhavnani has taken the responsibility to preserve and promote her Sindhi culture. It’s a task she doesn’t take lightly. As she tells us, it’s her way of understanding and presenting her identity. 

In 2019, Bhavnani took her film Sindhustan, a documentary that shows the story of the largest migration in history through tattoos, across the globe. Now, she’s penned a powerful poem, “When a Sindhi Woman Dies, So Does a Book”, which has been selected to be a part of an art installation at the Poems from the Washing Lines event in Southwest London.  The second season of this immersive festival, curated by Qisetna in partnership with Westminster Council, will see her work drape the Moat Garden’s clotheslines — turning public space into a canvas of languages, legacies, and stories of belonging. 

Poems from the Washing Lines project turns parks into an open-air exhibition. Poets, residents, and artists from diverse backgrounds submit odes to land, memory, migration, and identity. It’s an exhibit that’s a collective mosaic thoughtfully curated under themes like connection, displacement, and resilience.