Zehra Naqvi is a Karachi-born writer raised on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, B.C.). She is a winner of the 2021 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. She also won Room’s 2016 Poetry Contest. She holds two MSc degrees from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose is a brilliant, thought provoking and heartfelt collection. The opening with Majlis, ‘My daddammi turns the living room into a great book’… immediately draws in the reader. We are led to a gathering place of memories, silences, languages, emotions, the said and unsaid often found in such living room moments across generations, continents, histories and personal experiences. The use of innovative spacing and formats in this book expresses what needs to be heard or held in silence. One is left with a feeling that the knot has unraveled.
Interview by Meharoona Ghani
Meharoona Ghani (MG): What led you to become a poet?
Zahra Naqvi (ZN): I grew up with poetry around me. My parents would recite Ghalib and Iqbal to me. I was also exposed to nohas and marsiyas very early on in my childhood. I would write poems as a teenager but I did not take writing poetry very seriously until I began reading poems at protests while I was in high school. There was something immediate, and powerful and public about the form—its orality, its precision, and the way it could distill emotion and energy when shared. As a teenager, I also discovered that poetry made me more courageous—a poem could be bold and honest and angry and loud or quiet. It could say things that I struggled to express or comprehend outside of the form. I did not really comfortably identify as a poet for a long time—I’m not sure if I still do—writing poetry occurs in specific bursts and moments in my life. It feels like entering a state of being. When that moment or state passes, I can’t write a poem to save my life. I now have a better understanding of my process, but it is a slippery thing I can’t claim to have a grasp on all of the time. Although, I do think poetry requires a certain kind of attentiveness to the world and a fascination for the details around you. Being invested in life. I take that very seriously. In that regard, I have always been a poet. Many of us are.
MG: What inspired you to write The Knot of My Tongue?
ZN: I had different sources of inspiration for this collection. I was especially intrigued by women characters in moments of aloneness in traditional Islamic stories. There’s something both violent and prophetic about the experience of aloneness—depending on the circumstances and shape of that aloneness. Solitude can strengthen one’s sense of self but aloneness as a result of violence can destroy your sense of self. I was also intrigued by how these women characters in Islamic traditions aren’t always read as prophetic—as being the originators of traditions in their own right—Mary, Hajar, Yukabid (Umm Musa), Zainab. In those stories, you often find the divine among the people society overlooks or casts out (often very violently). I’m interested in the moments after a person has been cast out or has experienced violence. How does one find language and a sense of self from that place of loss and silence? How does one move forward?
MG: I really love the title, The Knot of My Tongue. Why was it important for you to write this book?
ZN: The impulse to put this collection together came out of a desire to read a book like this book. I had some images, theological questions, mythological and historical characters, and worlds that I wanted to see on the page. I wanted to write what I wish I had been able to read when I found myself at a loss for language at certain moments in my life. I’m not sure I was able to write exactly the thing I was desiring to read, but I was writing towards that need, and in an attempt to inhabit and explore these specific worlds and characters on the page.
MG: I really love the use of words in another language and script in some instances. Can you talk a bit about this? What types of ideas, images or feelings were you able to invoke by doing this?
ZN: My relationship to language has always been multilingual. I grew up speaking Urdu, hearing stories and poetry in Urdu—ghazals and marsiyas. There were also Farsi and Arabic influences in my upbringing. The lines and curves of nastaliq and Arabic script on the page. The sounds of the Quran and daily Islamic prayers. With this collection, I found myself reaching for these specific sounds, scripts, and rhythms that shape how I access language.
MG: ‘all memory is water
when you touch it it ripples
when you try to hold it the words falls apart’
I really resonate with the themes of memory, water, words, tongue, silences, loss, language, the said and unsaid …. throughout your book. What impact do you hope your book will have on readers?
ZN: I began writing the opening section of the collection after a year of living with some close friends during the lockdown. The poems felt like a continuation of many of the conversations we had been having in a very intimate and trusting space. Our conversations had helped us give language to each other for experiences we each had found difficult to articulate. I hope this collection contains that sense of intimacy between friends—that it feels conversational, uninhibited, and honest. There’s always the hope that these poems might do for readers what poetry does for me, which is to put into words experiences for which I struggle to find language.
MG: From a craft point of view, you’ve used innovative structures and spacing in your poetry. One of my favorite poems is Sajdah. The line drawn on the page looks like a person in prostration which I found very impactful and powerful in this poem. When you’re writing, how do you decide the formatting for a specific piece? Is it based on rhythm, instinct or something else?
ZN: Each poem requires its own form. Sometimes there’s a set of images, a sound, a rhythm, or a question that I begin with, but it doesn’t really cohere into a poem until I find the right form. It’s the form that gives the poem energy and friction. Other times it’s a form or a set of constraints that I begin with, and those constraints help guide the poem forward, pushing me toward a direction I might not have otherwise considered. A poem is like water and the form is the container—its shape is what gives it meaning—it determines whether the water is a still pond or a raging river or a wide, contemplative ocean. The poem لسان الحال | the language which things themselves speak began in a very sonic and oral way for me. I was speaking the words out loud as I wrote, listening and following the sounds. It began with sound, and then it found its form: the poem needed to look like these sounds and images were underwater. It was a garbled underwater language. The poem Tongue began with the idea of writing a ghazal with “tongue” as its radif. I wanted the repetition to guide me. This form came first and shaped the poem. With Sajdah, the poem found its form in the process of composition. While writing, I realized the poem wanted to collapse into a line, for the words to cease and for the poem to turn into the sajdah itself.
MG: Where do you find your source of strength and courage to write?
ZN: There comes a point when the impulse to write and finish a project overrides the fear and anxiety of writing. Discipline also helps, a regular writing routine to fall into, and a few close readers I trust with whom I can share the work when it’s ready. It’s the anticipation of finally being able to share something I’ve been working on for a long time with a few friends that often keeps me going. Otherwise, it’s very easy to give up after a rough first draft that’s far from what I’d like to see on the page. The thought of the work being read also makes me want to make it better, stronger, more precise. Writing that pushes me out of my comfort zone—the kind of writing that I have not yet figured out how to do or requires skills I feel I don’t yet have—is always terrifying, but it is also what’s most interesting and keeps me most engaged.