Hammer, J.Ledger
Section 05 · Subject

The archive is the point.

My father lived exactly as he wished, sharing his vision with us despite never learning to write. He signed his name with a proud thumbprint, and with that same quiet pride, he raised us to look beyond the boundaries we were born into. Rather than holding us to the past, he helped us break its chains. We left behind the clichés, the dogmas of religion and nationality, and the inherited judgments meant to frame us. We chose instead to walk toward a liberated, unconditional future.

I left in my twenties. It was not a decision. It was arithmetic. Sweden took the first ten years — a language course, a night job that paid while the poems did not, and a union I still call the best university I attended. England since.

I write in English, with roots in Farsi and Kurdish, and I keep the language plain so the story carries. I write witness poems: spare lines about labour, exile and survival. Ledgers and laws turned back into testimony. Factory light, cold air, the smell of bread and chain.

What mainstream accounts leave out is the work done, the damage carried, and the ordinary cost of being moved through history. That is what goes in here.

Writing is not a luxury. It is evidence.

Entry 001Subject
Name
Hammer, Josef
Work
Poet · Novelist
First tongue
Kurdish · Sorani
Working in
English
Also
SV · FA · TR
Status
Exile
Filed from
England
Record
2018 — 2026
Contact

For editors, translators and booksellers

Rights, permissions, readings and review copies.