Tara Singh, "✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗"

Tara Singh (they/them) is a queer, neurodivergent poet and occasional facilitator, born in Nairobi and raised in Nottingham. Their writing explores the Indian diasporic experience, queerness, gender identity, intergenerational trauma, mental illness, and disability.

About ✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗, by Tara Singh

My debut pamphlet, ✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗ (Five Leaves, 2025), emerged from several years of engagement with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, a psychotherapeutic model that conceptualises the self as composed of multiple "parts." Working through trauma within this framework, I began to visualise my internal system through emojis, each representing a particular survival response:

🦔 = fawn

🌋 = fight

🎭 = flight

❄️ = freeze

🌝 = befriend

These symbols became a creative shorthand for understanding emotional states and behavioural patterns. I often find it difficult to answer the everyday question, "How are you?"—but I can describe, in detail, how each of these parts feels and interacts.

Much of this exploration took place in collaboration with my therapist, through shared Google Docs in which the different parts of me "spoke" and received responses. These dialogues became both therapeutic and creative, allowing a multiplicity of voices to coexist on the page.

When I began composing ✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗, I realised that each section of the pamphlet was being authored by a different part. The chapters correspond directly to the IFS framework:

🦔 = fawn ⚘

🌋 = fight ✹

🎭 = flight ∞

❄️ = freeze ⊗

🌝 = befriend 〇

In this sense, the pamphlet can be read as a polyphonic work—one written collaboratively by all five internal voices. The cover, perhaps, should credit the full IFS team: 🦔🌋🎭❄️🌝.

Below, you can read a couple of poems from ✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗. You can read more about the collection on the publisher's website here. 

From ✹Fr⚘gm∞nts⊗

part of that world 

look at this house
it is not neat to end up with a girl who
doesn't seem to have a collection
of anything to make complete

there is no trove or treasure
no wonders or cavern
looking around you'd think
no child lives here at all

I'm the first there are no others
my scales are emerald satin
my hair is lush fire-red
I made a wish because I thought

I wanted to be where the people are
one day the girl decides
to take me to that place
what's it called? the bathroom

I'm ready to dance & swim but
she perches me on the edge of ugly coral
I want to ask Matey all my questions
he's gruff & unfriendly

I watch the bath being filled with
what do you call them? bubbles
they're flat
I wait for an invitation to play

the father comes in the girl seems
to forget I'm there I try to shut my eyes
then I remember my eyelids are plastic
the father leaves the girl seems to

forget what happened
she gets into her nightie
I try to say something but
I remember I'm not real

(taken from "freeze" chapter❄️⊗)
 

The Summer Holiday I Decide to Fight

His elbows have jigsaw bends so
he can punch in a weak plastic way
a boy in Derby sold him to me for £1.99

Brother's vest, clammy eggs in tigger cup
gulp don't throw up burpee 1 2 3
Papa's pullup bar until dizzy

The Undertaker punches stones
I punch dried kala chana, my notebook
holds predictions good guys & bad

I make boy cousins fight, I always win
Baldish is the first to say fists clenched
"boys & girls shouldn't play this way"

neck flushed he points at my chest
"you need to get a bra" I lob the Undertaker
over the fence into bushes next door

My new notebook measures me
every day how many calories I take in
& how much I burn away

(taken from "fight" chapter 🌋✹)