2 Poems
&
4 DRAWINGS/GESTURES
KAZIM ALI
Lawny
Bream the hull bref and brey the sale
Swale hollow blawen apport then seisin
Claims space here sapper seized seeded
Seen to ward warred portal of the sea
Open now horizontal sky naut to spell
Barish cour as the vower by skeel skelps
New wards this after fore to and lee I swear
By skelfs and switches to divine route
True or rue I weld feuer shore row more
To ken this kinah token kin restower
Aboard the small bouet abroad a shrike
In the night’s natte nave nau swerve
Bairn of barren lawn lie down in the clow
Dow of din dhow of dheen dowse be doust
Bream the hull bref and brey the sale
Swale hollow blawen apport then seisin
Claims space here sapper seized seeded
Seen to ward warred portal of the sea
Open now horizontal sky naut to spell
Barish cour as the vower by skeel skelps
New wards this after fore to and lee I swear
By skelfs and switches to divine route
True or rue I weld feuer shore row more
To ken this kinah token kin restower
Aboard the small bouet abroad a shrike
In the night’s natte nave nau swerve
Bairn of barren lawn lie down in the clow
Dow of din dhow of dheen dowse be doust
Pelt
Pelt of self left or felt
Lept from corpse to kin
Plot plaited flat in fault
Paltered the pall you haloed
In hand platted the plat
The plan the plot polted
All the fallen pollen
In flawy feint or fall
Pell then pelt away
Pled and led safened by
Sweven by sabin each
Savan pauts and paups
What kine could spill
or spell pelf left a felt self
Pelt of self left or felt
Lept from corpse to kin
Plot plaited flat in fault
Paltered the pall you haloed
In hand platted the plat
The plan the plot polted
All the fallen pollen
In flawy feint or fall
Pell then pelt away
Pled and led safened by
Sweven by sabin each
Savan pauts and paups
What kine could spill
or spell pelf left a felt self
4 Drawings/Gestures
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020), Inquisition (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), All One’s Blue (HarperCollins India, 2016), Sky Ward (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008); The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005), winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon (Wesleyan University Press, 2009) and Wind Instrument (Spork Press, 2014). His most recent book is Northern Light: Power, Land and the Memory of Water (Milkweed Editions, 2021), which Literary Hub called “A balm for the soul." His novels include The Secret Room: A String Quartet (Kaya Press, 2017) and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies (Tupelo Press, 2018) and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice (Tupelo Press, 2011). He is also an accomplished translator of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others, and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism.
In 2003 Ali co-founded Nightboat Books and served as the press’s publisher until 2007. He has received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and his poetry has been featured in Best American Poetry. Ali has been a regular columnist for the American Poetry Review and a contributing editor for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Writer’s Chronicle. He is a former member of the Cocoon Theatre Modern Dance Company. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. |
THE AUTHOR ON MUSCLE MEMORY
"Muscle memory" means being able to do something because the body remembers it, not the mind. And it is an intelligence as sophisticated: how we know how to walk up stairs for example, or to reach behind us and grab something off a shelf, or make a dance, or type a line without looking down. Walk on a tightrope without looking down. In the poems I wrote during the early days of the pandemic I was in language unknown because we were in a life unknown. Rather than a sentence or poetic line I'd rehearsed a thousand times before or with a grammar (Subject-verb-object, how boring) or a vocabulary (Standard American English) I found myself troubling myself. As we were fixed in place, I imagined boring down-- back to earlier Englishes, including Middle English-- and ranging 'around'--into Scots, French, Middle French, Old Norse, Spanish-- but also into the present moment, into slang and the argot of the information age. They could all live in a poem. A poem that might not even be able to be "read" as much as it immediately in its own form would require translation. Or it could be read, but read out loud, for its sound and music. In these poems I aimed not to tread a path I'd tread already, but to make new lines, new sounds. Of course, the wilder the energy one seeks to harness the more of a shape or a frame one needs, so I chose that most English of shapes (and it's not even English but Italian and yet), the sonnet. Sonne et. Sun net. |