This collection of 100 poems captures the essence of the struggles women face and the extraordinary power they summon to transcend them. Whispers That Roared is more than poetry; it is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of women. It draws from their battles fought in shadows, their victories claimed in silence, and their dreams nurtured in the face of despair. This book is an invitation to listen, to feel, and to honor the stories of those who have whispered long enough and are now roaring with the force of their truth.
Let these words move your soul and stir your heart, for within these pages lies the strength of a world carried by women. We got a chance to speak to the author Sazina Khan about her book, and here is what she has to say-
1. What sparked the idea for Whispers That Roared?
The genesis of Whispers That Roared lies in the unseen labor of emotional endurance, particularly in women’s lives. I was moved by how society often equates silence with submission, when in reality, silence can be a strategy of survival, resilience, and even quiet defiance. The book was inspired by the emotional negotiations women make daily—smiling through heartbreaks, working through grief, and enduring erasure while holding families, institutions, and dreams together. I wanted to craft a space where their whispered truths—stories too sacred or painful to scream—could finally rise in volume and be honored as roars of reclamation.
My years of living in Dubai—an extraordinary confluence of cultures—shaped this vision profoundly. In this city, I’ve shared coffee with an Afghan poet who wrote verses in exile, listened to an Emirati grandmother recount bedtime folktales that survived colonization, and met Filipina nannies whose strength was never documented but lived on in the lives of the children they raised. These women didn’t always speak loudly, but their presence, their resolve, was thunderous. Their stories—diverse in language, faith, and circumstance—carried an astonishing common thread: the quiet courage it takes to persist.
While traveling through the Alhambra in Spain, I was struck by the silent grandeur of a once-glorious civilization—its poetry carved into walls, its beauty preserved through ruin. That, too, felt like a whisper that refused to be erased. I carried that imagery back with me, and it wove itself into the architecture of this book. Whispers That Roared became not just a title but a testimony—to the resilience of those who continue to rise, even when no one is watching.
2. Which lived experience or story behind one of these poems still surprises you when you revisit it?
The poem Stitched Wounds, Silent Lips still haunts me. It was inspired by a woman I met during a women’s leadership summit—elegant, articulate, a force in the corporate world. Later that evening, over tea, she shared the unspeakable: years of surviving domestic violence, raising two daughters under a veil of normalcy, and finally walking away without ever telling the world why. That story carved itself into my spirit. When I revisit the poem, what surprises me is how deeply I internalized her duality—her bruised vulnerability stitched invisibly beneath her tailored success. It reminds me that many of the strongest women walk through fire in silence, and we may never know until their scars begin to sing through stories.
A similar moment occurred during my stay in Kashmir last summer. I met a woman who had lost her husband and son to conflict, yet continued to weave shawls with a quiet grace that defied despair. She offered me kahwa, and in that fragile moment of shared silence, I saw her strength mirrored in the woman I had met in Dubai. Different geographies, same sorrow. Same endurance. That poem became a confluence of both stories—stitches holding together more than just fabric, but generations of suppressed pain and preserved dignity.
3. Walk us through your process: do you brainstorm, free-write, or let the poem emerge fully formed?
My process is a dialogue between the conscious and the subconscious. For Whispers That Roared, I often began with a moment—an image, a fragment of conversation, or a headline about a silenced woman or a mother hiding her tears behind her child’s triumph. Some poems arrived like fully formed confessions; others required excavation—unearthing layers of metaphor and memory. I don’t write on demand; I listen, observe, and absorb until the emotion matures into language. At times, I would free-write in longhand, letting the rhythm of my breath guide the ink, especially when addressing trauma or resilience. Poetry, for me, is not about invention—it is about revelation.
I remember walking through the desert landscape near Al Marmoom with just my journal and silence. A single falcon circling overhead reminded me of both solitude and sovereignty. That image led to an entire sequence of metaphors about invisible power. Similarly, during a late-night stroll along the Singapore River, I watched an elderly woman release a floating lantern and whisper a prayer. I didn’t understand her words, but I understood her yearning. That memory flowed, days later, into a poem about letting go of grief without needing an audience. Moments like these, seemingly incidental, have become the soul of my process.
4. Among the 100 poems, which one do you feel would “roar” most loudly if it could speak for itself, and why?
Her Name Was Courage would undoubtedly rise above the rest in its roar. It is the story of a girl denied education, married young, silenced for years, and yet—one day—she opened a small classroom under a tree to teach other girls to read. That poem is both a lament and a legacy. If it could speak, it would echo the battles fought in kitchens, courtyards, and courtrooms by women who never had microphones but changed generations through quiet revolutions. This poem doesn’t raise its voice with rage—it lifts it with purpose. And that kind of courage, born not from rebellion but from reclamation, reverberates far beyond the page.
That roar echoed when I visited Luxor in Egypt and walked among statues of queens whose names history often buried. One guide pointed to a carving of Queen Hatshepsut and whispered, “She ruled silently, but ruled well.” I thought of all the women I know in Dubai who build lives, careers, and legacies while fighting invisible wars. That resonance between the past and present, between queens in stone and queens in supermarkets, is what gave the poem its heartbeat.
5. How do you balance personal stories with themes that resonate universally, considering the anthology is a collection of poems?
Balancing the deeply personal with the universally resonant is not merely a literary strategy—it is an emotional imperative. I believe that when you tell the truth of one soul with honesty and depth, it carries echoes of a thousand others. In Whispers That Roared, I began with my own inner landscapes—moments of quiet despair, fragile hope, and unspoken courage—but I wrote always with a collective heartbeat in mind.
Many of the poems draw inspiration from real women—mothers who crossed borders carrying their children and nothing else, daughters who defied generational silence, and widows who refused to be erased by grief. In telling their stories through a poetic lens, I allowed my own truths to stretch beyond individual experience and tap into the deeper, shared well of human emotion.
I experienced this first-hand in Hong Kong, while watching a grandmother teach her granddaughter how to kneel and light incense during a traditional ceremony. The child’s hands trembled, but the elder’s calm guidance reminded me of my own mother’s hands during Eid, guiding mine in prayer. That moment—entirely foreign in its setting but deeply familiar in its tenderness—reminded me that we are all stitched from the same emotions. Pain, resilience, longing, and the quiet act of enduring are not bound by culture, geography, or time.
Ultimately, I believe poetry is a bridge between the individual and the infinite. It allows us to bring our most intimate experiences to the page and, in doing so, invite others to walk through them as their own.
6. What do you hope readers feel when they finish reading Whispers That Roared?
I hope they feel witnessed—in the most profound and human sense of the word. Not merely observed or analyzed, but truly seen. I want readers, especially women, to feel as if someone has reached into the unspoken chambers of their hearts and named the emotions they had no language for. Whether it’s the quiet ache of invisible labor, the hidden sorrow of dreams deferred, or the triumphant reclaiming of one’s voice after years of suppression—Whispers That Roared is meant to hold those truths with tenderness and dignity.
But more than recognition, I hope they feel reignited. I want this book to serve as a soft rebellion against the normalization of silence. Too often, women are praised for enduring, for being graceful under pressure, for bending without breaking. But this collection says: You were never meant to carry it all in silence. If even one woman closes this book and dares to speak her truth, set a boundary, or walk away from something that has long dimmed her light, then the book has fulfilled its purpose.
In Georgia, while exploring a cliffside monastery, I watched a woman light a candle and weep—not loudly, not brokenly, but in release. A monk nearby simply nodded and lit one beside hers. I didn’t know her story, but in that moment, I felt her redemption. That is what I want Whispers That Roared to offer: not solutions, but sacred spaces where readers can release what they’ve long buried—and finally hear the sound of their own voice rising.
7. Are there interpretations of your poems that surprised you—ways readers saw something different than you intended?
Absolutely—and one interpretation, in particular, left a lasting impact. A reader once shared how the poem Fighting Shadows mirrored her struggle with postpartum depression. I had written the piece as a metaphor for inherited fear—a woman battling not her present, but the echoes of a past she never fully understood. But this reader saw her own reflection in it: the dissonance between holding her newborn and feeling like a stranger to herself.
She said something I’ll never forget: “Sometimes shadows aren’t from the past. They’re cast by your own present.” That interpretation expanded the poem for me. I saw, in her reading, a whole new dimension of truth. And that’s the beauty of poetry—it leaves just enough space for others to enter and find something unexpected. I don’t feel possessive of my work. If it helps someone find their own meaning, then the poem has done something far more powerful than I ever intended.
During a reading in a Dubai community library, a man from Georgia shared how another poem, which I wrote about spiritual longing, reminded him of his mother’s final prayer. I had never envisioned the poem in a religious light, but it resonated deeply with his experience. That moment affirmed for me that every reader brings their own light to the poem—and sometimes, that light reveals meanings I never knew were hidden.
8. Did you ever face a creative block during this project, and what unconventional thing did you try to break through?
Yes, I did—and not just once, but at several critical points during the creation of Whispers That Roared. Writing about deeply personal themes—grief, silence, generational pain—often brought me to emotional standstills. There were times when the words simply wouldn’t come. The feelings were there, the urgency was real, but the page remained blank. It felt like my mind was full, but my voice was missing.
Over the years, I’ve learned not to panic during these phases. I don’t force productivity. Instead, I pause, shift my energy, and immerse myself in activities that reconnect me to presence. Sometimes I step away from writing entirely and pour myself into mentoring others. Guiding aspiring writers through their own creative struggles often reignites my own spark. In helping someone else unlock their story, I inevitably find the threads of my own.
At other times, I turn to travel or reflection through solitude. I once walked through the serene pine forests in Georgia, completely offline, just breathing and noticing—how light filtered through the trees, how silence echoed like a poem. That walk didn’t produce a line of poetry immediately, but three weeks later, it resurfaced in a piece that became one of the quiet triumphs in the collection.
Closer to home in Dubai, I often take late-night drives along Al Qudra, windows down, no music—just letting the desert air untangle what my mind is holding. I’ve also found that cooking, arranging flowers, or simply reading something completely unrelated to my own work—like philosophy or children’s stories—gently nudges me back into flow.
Creative blocks, for me, are no longer barriers; they are signals. They tell me it’s time to feel rather than articulate, to receive rather than produce. And once I’ve rested and reconnected, the words return—not as a flood, but as a quiet whisper. Always a whisper. And I follow it.
9. If the poems could deliver a single message to the world, what would it be?
You don’t have to shout to be heard. The essence of Whispers That Roared is this: the world must learn to listen not only to what is said aloud but to what trembles in silence. Whether it's a mother who sacrifices quietly, an immigrant woman rebuilding from scratch, or a girl questioning her worth in a world that measures her by appearance—each carries a voice that deserves dignity.
If my poems had one unified message, it would be this: even the faintest voice matters. And when it finds the courage to speak—even if unsure, even if quivering—it can challenge narratives, rewrite destinies, and move mountains. Strength is not always in the volume of what we say, but in the truth we dare to speak.
Once, at a poetry reading in Singapore, a young man approached me and said, “Your poem reminded me of something my grandmother once whispered before she passed: ‘I hope someone remembers me not for what I said, but for what I stayed silent about.’” That, for me, was the message in motion. We remember not just what was said, but what was felt. And that is where the true roar lies—in the echoes we leave behind.