Wrong Person to Ask

Marjorie Lotfi’s poems have been published in journals and anthologies in the UK and US (including The Rialto, Gutter, Ambit, Magma, Rattle and Staying Human), included in Best Scottish Poems 2021 and performed on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio 4. Her pamphlet Refuge, poems about her childhood in revolutionary Iran, was published by Tapsalteerie Press in 2018. She has been the Poet in Residence at Jupiter Artland, Spring Fling and the Wigtown Book Festival, and was commissioned to write Pilgrim, a sequence about migration between Iran and the US, for the St Magnus Festival in Orkney. Marjorie also founded the Belonging Project, considering the experiences of refugees with over 1,500 participants across Scotland, and is a Co-Founder and Director of the charity Open Book. She is an Ignite Fellow with the Scottish Book Trust, one of the 12 Collective of women writers, and Deputy Chair of the board of StAnza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival. She was one of the three winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021, and her first book-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

The Wrong Person to Ask by Marjorie Lotfi is a wondrous treasure – elegant poems of great tenderness and detail, vivid in heart and imagery, mesmerising in power. Whole worlds and people shimmer alive through scenes and stories of exile, departure, arrival, but most importantly, clear witness and remembrance. A deeply honouring book fully built of love.

• I13 Refuge14 On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say15 The Wrong Person to Ask16 Two Grandmothers17 Maman Bozorg18 The gun in its holster19 Riding the Line20 The Game21 Crossing the street for mother’s cigarettes22 Shut Out the Noise23 Packing for America24 Hope25 To the Airport26 Origin27 The Last Thing28 Alarm I29 Alarm II30 I Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)31 II Picture of Boy, Looking Away (Gaza, 2015)32 Gabriella’s Dream33 What You See in the Dark34 Wishbone35 Correction36 Destruction of the Forty Martyrs Cathedral, Aleppo, Syria37 Granddaughter, I entered your mother’s house38 Checkpoint, Matveyev Kurgan39 Khanoom40 The End of the Road40 i [There’s a moment every morning]41 ii [Each breath in this place]42 iii [Every blade against the cutting-board]43 iv [She takes her boys back every summer]44 v [Even in this lack of light, she sees]45 vi [The boys carry her good looks]46 vii [In her eightieth year, she sees her sisters]II49 Sea Gooseberry (Pleurobrachia)50 Sunday on the Luing Sound51 Number 9 Cullipool52 Sunflower53 Star of the Sea54 Williamina Fleming55 What Work Is56 Omega Centauri57 Drift58 Say It’s Nothing, Say It’s Rust59 Horizon60 Out to Sea61 When They Ask62 The Trunk63 After the Match64 The first thing he doesn’t forget65 The Unfinished House66 Storm Light67 The Last Keeper68 Citizen69 Moving70 And this is how it begins71 O Love!72 Edward Thomas on His Last Night with Helen73 Keep74 The Hebridean Crab Apple76 Acknowledgements