POEM FOR SOMEONE I CARE ABOUT

Shazia Hafiz Ramji


“You just get in my head,” you said. The admission itself
the gesture I cannot bear: the one where your hand

will have been on my hair, while asleep
like my father’s hand when I was a kid. Or, like the phone

against my cheek, when you spoke of millipedes and spiders
and I was a child again, not listening to what you said

because the sound of your voice is the horizon that folds out
of itself, like clothes in the sun, turning in the wind

pulling bright tongues from the black air, clothes so close to my skin.
I will have lost my breath when you bring out the flask of whisky

at the airport. If you were anyone else, I would have the face to ask you in
once more with feeling, but this is you pretending to give me a guise

because you’re afraid I’ve not caught up to you, but I’ve been listening
to you and I’m still listening to you, and I want to ask you:

Is it too much to want to cry with you?
Because your hands make me miss your father for you.





Shazia Hafiz Ramji is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. In 2019, the CBC named her as a "writer to watch." Her writing has recently appeared in Poetry Northwest, Music & Literature, and Canadian Literature. She is a columnist for Open Book and is currently at work on a novel.

An interview with Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being, is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in fall 2018. She is the author of the chapbook, Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017), and her poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and The Humber Literary Review, respectively. Shazia is an editor for Metatron Press and Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.

How did you begin writing, and what keeps you going?

I'm not sure how I began writing, but I constantly remember writing when I was young, even though I didn't think of it as "writing" at the time. I remember writing stories between sets of Apogee racing games on my first computer and writing poems in front of the TV. I used to love animals, like many kids, and I remember being overwhelmed by beautiful and sad things, which moved me to write. To be honest, I think writing was like a tic. I remember being hyper aware of the seemingly small moments of sadness and awe and the complexity of things. In many ways, I'm still motivated by nuance and complexity. On good days when I feel strongly about my work, I'm almost always motivated by loneliness – to try to reach another person out there. That doesn't always mean that the writing is going to be hopeful or optimistic. Sometimes I write to make sense of the world. Sometimes I write for the dead.

What poets have influenced the ways in which you write?

Far too many to name. Off the top of my head: Dionne Brand, Ken Babstock, Richard Siken, Phyllis Webb, John Thompson, Rimbaud, Solmaz Sharif, Kaveh Akbar, Jonathan Ball, Terrance Hayes, Mark Strand, Fred Moten.

Your first full-length collection, Port of Being, is scheduled to appear this fall with Invisible Publishing. What was the process of putting together a full-length collection, compared to putting together your chapbook, Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017)?

Prosopopoeia brought together some poems I'd written over the years. It's not necessarily unified, though themes and connections emerged after seeing the various pieces in conversation with each other. The chapbook clarified my obsessions with surveillance, geography, time, and relations between people and objects, and it began to couple those with more personal experiences of loneliness, addiction, and clinical depression. Recognizing these connections in the chapbook was crucial for the book. When I was writing Port of Being, I constantly jostled with the weight of these personal experiences and a sense of responsibility to facts, history, and the experiences of other people. This struggle was intensified when, a few years ago, a thief who stole my laptop followed me and had knowledge of my whereabouts. It was a traumatizing experience that made the more removed preoccupations with surveillance and space far more personal and immediate. The book has a clear arc (at least to me) that moves into the lyrical. I should clarify that the book isn't about me being stalked, though. I've preferred to tell it slant (thanks to Emily Dickinson for the wise words!). It began with research, which led me to undertake a kind of surveillance (after Vito Acconci's Following Piece) in return, and this gave rise to the first part of the book. The process of putting together the book was like following a trail of myself in the world and mapping it all together. I learned so much about the world (for lack of a better word) when writing this book and that makes me feel okay.

How important has mentorship been to your work? Is there anyone who specifically assisted your development as a writer?

Mentorship has been extremely important. Wayde Compton's work has been influential for me for many years now. He is the director of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, which I was fortunate enough to be able to attend thanks to a scholarship. As well, Port of Being received the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, for which Wayde was the sole judge. He is a kind of bright light for me through his work and his words. And, Meredith Quartermain, who was my mentor at the The Writer's Studio, continues to be important for me. She encourages my curiosity about Vancouver and my interests in psychogeography and theory, and she understands things deeply. The integrity of my undergraduate professor, Jeff Derksen, still carries me through my work. I would not be where I am without them.

Over the last year or so, working with Dr. Ian Williams at UBC has pretty much changed my life. His approaches to poetry and writing balance a kind of rigour and play, experimentation and lyricism, which I have yearned to find. As well, it's really something to be able to talk to a prof about diaspora and similar histories, and all kinds of sensitivities around navigating the literary world as a visibly racialized person and how it affects the work. Because of Ian, I was able to be on a panel at the Canadian Writers Summit and share the research process that gave rise to my first book. As well, I had been reluctant to share the research process for my book prior to speaking with Ian, because the stalker incident and the subsequent surveillance I undertook made me feel uneasy. But, Ian has been encouraging, critical, and generous. His presence makes me feel less alone.

You were the poetry editor for PRISM International and are currently on the editorial board. Why was this important, and what did you learn through the process?

During my time as the poetry editor at PRISM, it became apparent to me that I had to ask for the work I wanted to see. I sought out work by emerging writers, such as Mohammad Kebbewar, with whom I worked to develop his poetry. It means a lot to me that I gave him his first professional publication. Recently, you asked me for some work. I sent you a poem called "Conspiracy of Love," which I thought I could avoid sharing, because it's a harrowing poem for me. The fact that you asked me for work made me feel okay and safe to share this scary poem, which was received surprisingly well! It was a relief to see this poem in the world because it's a very important poem for me. It's dedicated to those who have experienced addiction and clinical depression. It's not meant to be a poem for anyone else. This was partly the nervousness around this poem. My point is that editors have to ask for the work they want to see. When I was at PRISM, it was clear to me that if I wanted to work closely with writers, I would have to balance my workload by publishing more polished pieces so that I could devote time to giving a few writers in-depth developmental edits. I wish that wasn't the case, but it was. I've been a poetry editor for book publishers, and I think that the one-to-one work ethic for book editing is something I've tried to bring to editing for magazines, just to remember the reasons for doing what we do, which can get lost in the face of quick turnarounds and deadlines. It's very fulfilling to be able to work closely with writers, and I'm glad I have the chance to do so as an editor at Metatron Press and the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive.

What are you currently working on?

I'm working on reading! I'm finding it important to read for pleasure, especially as I continue to work on a book of stories that seems to be turning into a novel (god help us all) and a second book of poems. Reading reminds me how this party got started and why I should still be attending... 

Can you name a poet you think should be receiving more attention?

Faith Arkorful. 

Train : a journal of introduction

Issue #1 : Sean Braune MLA Chernoff nathan dueck Bhaswati Ghosh Canisia Lubrin Geoffrey Nilson Craig Santos Perez Julia Polyck-O’Neill Shazia Hafiz Ramji Rebecca Rustin Jared Schickling Aaron Tucker

A limited amount of copies will be available for free at the following locations:

Open Books: A Poem Emporium (Seattle WA), Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop (Brooklyn NY), knife| fork | book (Toronto ON), the ottawa small press book fair, June 23, 2018 (Ottawa ON) and hamilton zineposium, July 8, 2018 (Hamilton ON).

includes shipping

Canadian $4.00 CAD American $6.00 CAD International $8.00 CAD

Sean Braune’s first book of philosophy, Language Parasites: Of Phorontology, appeared in 2017 from Punctum Books. His poetry has appeared in ditch, The Puritan, Rampike, Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere. He has two poetry chapbooks out with above/ground press—the vitamins of an alphabet (2016) and The Cosmos (2018)—and a third forthcoming called Face Portraits and Author Cops. A chapbook of his creative writing has appeared from AngelHousePress called Story of Lilith (2017).

MLA Chernoff (@citation_bb) hopes this finds you well. They live a quiet life in “Toronto” (stinky, parasitic condotown) where they collect and care for erotic Minions™ figurines. MLA is a PhD candidate at The Neoliberal University of York University. Their first collection of pomes, delet this, was published by Hybrid Heaven in 2018. Please remember to hit like and subscribe. Best wishes xo xo

nathan dueck’s middle name is russel, which means his initials spell “nrd.” His parents tell him that nobody used that word when he was born, but dictionaries say otherwise. He is the author of king’s(mère) (Turnstone Press) and he’ll (Pedlar Press). His next poetry collection, A Very Special Episode, is forthcoming from Buckrider Books. 

Bhaswati Ghosh writes and translates fiction and nonfiction. She’s currently writing a non-fiction book on Delhi, India. Her work of translation from Bengali into English–My Days with Ramkinkar Baij–has been published by Niyogi Books. This work won her the Charles Wallace (India) Trust Fellowship for translation, as part of which she was a 2009 translator in residence at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Bhaswati’s writing has appeared in several literary journals, including Cargo Literary, The Maynard, Stonecoast Review, Pithead Chapel, Warscapes, Earthen Lamp Journal, Open Road review, and Coldnoon International Journal of Travel Writing. She has a background in journalism and writes for The Wire.

Bhaswati currently lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband. Her website is www.bhaswatighosh.com.

Canisia Lubrin is a writer, critic, teacher and editor. She has an MFA from University of Guelph. Her debut collection of poems Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn, 2017) was named a CBC Best Book of the Year, finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award, Pat Lowther Award and Raymond Souster award.

Geoffrey Nilson is the author of In my ear continuously like a stream (above/ground, 2017), O (Swimmer's Group, 2017), and We Have to Watch (Quilliad, 2016). His poetry and prose has appeared in various publications including Coast Mountain Culture, CV2, Lemon Hound, PRISM international, and The Capilano Review. He is a contributing editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and is currently at work on a collection of short fiction. 

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the co-editor of three anthologies and the author of four collections of poetry. He teaches at the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa.

Julia Polyck-O’Neill is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. She is a doctoral candidate in Brock University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program, where she is completing a SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary and comparative critical study of contemporary conceptualist literature and art in Vancouver. She has taught in art history and contemporary visual culture in the department of Visual Arts at the Marilyn I. Walker School, and is currently a visiting lecturer in American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Her writing has been published in B.C. Studies, Feminist Spaces, Tripwire, Fermenting Feminisms (a project of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, curated by Lauren Fournier), and The Avant Canada Anthology (WLU Press, forthcoming 2018). Her debut chapbook, femme, was published in 2016 by above/ground press; a second above/ground chapbook is forthcoming in August 2018.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being, is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in fall 2018. She is the author of the chapbook, Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017), and her poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and The Humber Literary Review, respectively. Shazia is an editor for Metatron Press and Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.

Rebecca Rustin is a freelance writer and translator in Montreal, QC, with poems in Prism and Pioneertown.

In addition to journal and ephemera pieces, Jared Schickling is the author of several BlazeVOX books, including The Mercury Poem (2017) and Province of Numb Errs (2016).  Other books include Needles of Itching Feathers (The Operating System, 2018); The Paranoid Reader: Essays, 2006-2012 (Furniture Press, 2014); Prospectus for a Stage (LRL Textile Series, 2014); Donald Trump and the Pocket Oracle (Moria Books, 2017); and Donald Trump in North Korea (2017).  He edited A Lyrebird: Selected Poems of Michael Farrell (BlazeVOX, 2017), and he edits Delete Press and The Mute Canary, publishers of poetry.  He lives in Lockport, NY. 

Aaron Tucker is the author of the novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) as well as two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Bookthug) and punchlines (Mansfield Press), and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (both published by Palgrave Macmillan). His current collaborative project, Loss Sets, translates poems into sculptures which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); he is also the co-creator of The ChessBard, an app that transforms chess games into poems (http://chesspoetry.com). Currently, he is an uninvited guest on the Dish with One Spoon Territory, where he is a lecturer in the English department at Ryerson University (Toronto), teaching creative and academic writing. He will be beginning his doctorate as an Elia Scholar in the Cinema and Media Studies Department at York University.

Conspiracy of Love

Shazia Hafiz Ramji
 

for those who are clean and sober

The problem with trying to one-up yourself
is not that you might die by your own hands,
but that you’ll be able to justify why
without feeling anything. When you were
in withdrawal, alone in your bed, the salt
from the sweat pressed on the mattress was testimony
to what you allowed: “I am Satan, because I deal
in language.” The next day, you had stopped
shaking, you went to work secular and clean.
There were no other addicts and you didn’t speak.
You know that lies look beautiful, unified, all parts
clicking together, lighting up your eyes. They are old
technology made new, sleek and gleaming
in crevasses like fog rolling around Renfrew.
You’re awake today to see it, because you’ve been
brave. You’ve noticed your friend has listened
and told you very boring things — not dismissed
them as errands. This is the task you will have to do,
soon enough, remembering all the ways your mind
moved — to write yourself into what you want
to call Conspiracy of Love. When the guy from Tinder
said hi to you in school, it didn’t strike you
that he might know you from the internet. You didn’t
remember who he was, not even when he called you
by your fake name. All you thought was, “I can’t
do this again. I want to be clean. I want to be Shazia.”
If you end this poem here, it might make sense,
but we both know this kind of work is occult.
So, you have to ask me: How do you want to finish
this poem? You have to leave it there. That way
at least it’s not about you anymore.
 

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being, is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in fall 2018. She is the author of the chapbook, Prosopopoeia (Anstruther Press, 2017), and her poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and The Humber Literary Review, respectively. Shazia is an editor for Metatron Press and Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.