Kazim Ali – författare

This groundbreaking, transgenre work-part detective story, part literary memoir, part imagined past-is intensely autobiographical and confessional. Proceeding sentence by sentence, city by city, and backwards in time, poet and essayist Kazim Ali details the struggle of coming of age between cultures, overcoming personal and family strictures to talk about private affairs and secrets long held. The text is comprised of sentences that alternate in time, ranging from discursive essay to memoir to prose poetry. Art, history, politics, geography, love, sexuality, writing, and religion, and the role silence plays in each, are its interwoven themes. Bright Felon is literally "autobiography" because the text itself becomes a form of writing the life, revealing secrets, and then, amid the shards and fragments of experience, dealing with the aftermath of such revelations. Bright Felon offers a new and active form of autobiography alongside such texts as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee, Lyn Hejinian's My Life, and Etel Adnan's In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country. A reader's companion is available at http://brightfelonreader.site.wesleyan.edu/

Titled for the influential singer left almost voiceless by a terrible syndrome, the poems bring sweet melodies and rhythms as the voices blend and become multitudinous. There's an honouring of not only survival, but of persistence, as this part research-based, pensive collection contemplates what it takes to move forward when the unimaginable holds you back.

Indian Winter begins with a narrator trying to write about a long-ago lover whose death he has just learned of. While on this journey into memory, he flees his current faltering relationship in search of new friendships and intimacies. Inspired by Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne, and by the writings of Anaïs Nin, Rachel Cusk, and Carole Maso, among others, Indian Winter finds itself where the travel diary, the künstlerroman, poetry, and autofiction meet. But the heartbreak brought on by his unravelling relationship and his family's inability to accept his queerness cannot be outrun; as he traverses India, our narrator can't help but repeatedly encounter himself and the range of love and alienation he has within.

CBC BOOKS: 2024 SPRING FICTION PREVIEWA queer writer travelling through India can't escape the regrets of his past, nor the impending ruin of his present."I am leaving for the winter – I have to get away from this small town and all its dangers – to write, read, think, all the most important things in the world but which are thought the least important, the most expendable."Thus begins the Indian winter of our narrator, a queer writer and translator much like the author, a winter that includes a meandering journey through India, trying to write about a long-ago lover whose death he has just learned of. While on this journey into memory, he flees his current faltering relationship in search of new friendships and intimacies. Inspired by Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne, and by the writings of Anaïs Nin, Rachel Cusk, and Carole Maso, among others, Indian Winter finds itself where the travel diary, the künstlerroman, poetry, and autofiction meet. But the heartbreak brought on by his unravelling relationship and his family's inability to accept his queerness cannot be outrun; as he traverses India, our narrator can't help but repeatedly encounter himself and the range of love and alienation he has within.

Winner of the 2022 Banff Mountain Book Award for Environmental LiteratureAn Outside Magazine Favorite Book of 2021A Book Riot Best Book of 2021A Shelf Awareness Best Book of 2021“Places do not belong to us. We belong to them.”The child of South Asian migrants, Kazim Ali was born in London, lived as a child in the cities and small towns of Manitoba, and made a life in the United States. As a man passing through disparate homes, he has never felt he belonged to a place. And yet, one day, the celebrated poet and essayist finds himself thinking of the boreal forests and lush waterways of Jenpeg, a community thrown up around the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River, where he once lived for several years as a child. Does the town still exist, he wonders? Is the dam still operational?When Ali goes searching, however, he finds not news of Jenpeg, but of the local Pimicikamak community. Facing environmental destruction and broken promises from the Canadian government, they have evicted Manitoba’s electric utility from the dam on Cross Lake. In a place where water is an integral part of social and cultural life, the community demands accountability for the harm that the utility has caused.Troubled, Ali returns north, looking to understand his place in this story and eager to listen. Over the course of a week, he participates in community life, speaks with Elders and community members, and learns about the politics of the dam from Chief Cathy Merrick. He drinks tea with activists, eats corned beef hash with the Chief, and learns about the history of the dam, built on land that was never ceded, and Jenpeg, a town that now exists mostly in his memory. In building relationships with his former neighbors, Ali explores questions of land and power―and in remembering a lost connection to this place, finally finds a home he might belong to.

A Book Riot and Shelf Awareness “Best Book of 2021“Places do not belong to us. We belong to them.”The child of South Asian migrants, Kazim Ali was born in London, lived as a child in the cities and small towns of Manitoba, and made a life in the United States. As a man passing through disparate homes, he has never felt he belonged to a place. And yet, one day, the celebrated poet and essayist finds himself thinking of the boreal forests and lush waterways of Jenpeg, a community thrown up around the building of a hydroelectric dam on the Nelson River, where he once lived for several years as a child. Does the town still exist, he wonders? Is the dam still operational?When Ali goes searching, however, he finds not news of Jenpeg, but of the local Pimicikamak community. Facing environmental destruction and broken promises from the Canadian government, they have evicted Manitoba’s electric utility from the dam on Cross Lake. In a place where water is an integral part of social and cultural life, the community demands accountability for the harm that the utility has caused.Troubled, Ali returns north, looking to understand his place in this story and eager to listen. Over the course of a week, he participates in community life, speaks with Elders and community members, and learns about the politics of the dam from Chief Cathy Merrick. He drinks tea with activists, eats corned beef hash with the Chief, and learns about the history of the dam, built on land that was never ceded, and Jenpeg, a town that now exists mostly in his memory. In building relationships with his former neighbors, Ali explores questions of land and power―and in remembering a lost connection to this place, finally finds a home he might belong to.

From the Introduction: “The goal with this anthology is to represent that full range of contemporary expressions of Islam, as well as a full range of genres—poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, political writing, cultural writing, and of course plenty of texts which mix and match and blur all of these modes . . . the trajectories between the pieces—like that of kismet—will be multiple, nonlinear, abstract. The Muslim community is plural and contradictory. This collection of voices ought to be symphony and cacophony at once, like the body of Muslims as they are today.”—Kazim Ali

The poetry of Kazim Ali “invites us to give ourselves over to the music of language” (Beloit Poetry Journal). Known for its lyrical and expressive language, “crafted with a controlled, delicate quality that never stops questioning, never stops teaching, and never stops astounding,” (American Poet), Ali’s work explores themes of identity, migration, and the intersections of cultural and spiritual traditions. Sukun (Arabic for stillness or rest, as well as being a diacritic that indicates there is no vowel to pronounce following a consonant) draws from a generous selection from Ali’s six full-length collections. This remarkable volume also includes 25 astonishing new poems and an afterword by the poet. Together, they allow us to trace Ali's passions and concerns and to take the measure of his art: the close attention to the spiritual and the visceral, and the deep language play that is at once musical and plain spoken.

Kazim Ali’s wildly inventive novel The Secret Room asks: how does one create a life of meaning in the face of loneliness and alienation from one’s own family, culture or even sense of self?In the space of a single day, the lives of four people converge and diverge in ways they themselves may not even measure. Sonia Chang, a violinist, prepares for a concert. Rizwan Syed, a yoga teacher, makes one last panicked attempt at reconciliation with his family. Jody Merchant tries to balance a stressful work life with a dream she abandoned long ago. Pratap Patel trudges through his life trying to ignore the pain he still feels at old losses. The experiences of these four characters, woven together in the manner of a string quartet, together create a raw, fluid composition.Kazim Ali (born 1971) is an American poet, novelist, essayist and professor. Born in the UK to parents of Indian descent, and raised in Canada and the US, Ali is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. He cofounded the independent press Nightboat Books.

Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family’s cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.

Kazim Ali’s searching descriptions of the Ramadan sensibility and its arduous but liberating annual rite of communal fasting is sure to be a revelation to many readers — intellectually illuminating and aesthetically exhilarating.Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family’s cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.

In 1953, Yoko Ono wrote a score called “Secret Piece,” an open-ended formula for musical performance in a forest at daybreak. Beginning with this invitation to creation, and using essays, diary entries, prose maps, and verse fragments, Kazim Ali marks a path through quantum physics, sixth-century Chola Empire sculptures, the challenges of literary translation and of climate change, and destruction of a priceless set of handmade flutes by airport security. Amid shards from far-flung histories and geographies he finds the cosmos.

Nightboat Books is proud to bring back this long out-of-print ecstatic, collaborative performative work. Written and arranged in an experimental mode akin to music or choreography, these fragmented lyrics create space and resonance honoring the physical splendor of both the body and the poem. This new edition includes several new poetic sequences and an extended essay.

Winner of the 2025 Pegasus Award for Poetry CriticismThis long-awaited and much-needed volume shines new light on one of America’s most beloved, and profound, poets—Lucille Clifton. Black Buffalo Woman is a deep, comprehensive dive into Clifton’s work through the eyes of celebrated poet and scholar, Kazim Ali. Collecting chapters of Clifton’s early manuscripts, late drafts, and integrating her books of children’s literature, Ali’s meticulously researched volume provides a brilliant and fresh perspective on Clifton’s life and work.Various chapters examine Clifton’s treatment of the body as a site of both joy and danger, spirituality, and an interrogation of American history, politics, and popular culture. The result of Ali’s scholarship and care highlights a dazzling array of Clifton’s poetic techniques and forms that will continue to inspire poets, readers, and Lucille Clifton fans—past, present and future—for decades to come.

This long-awaited and much-needed volume shines new light on one of America’s most beloved, and profound, poets—Lucille Clifton.Black Buffalo Woman is a deep, comprehensive dive into Clifton’s work through the eyes of celebrated poet and scholar, Kazim Ali. Collecting chapters of Clifton’s early manuscripts, late drafts, and integrating her books of children’s literature, Ali’s meticulously researched volume provides a brilliant and fresh perspective on Clifton’s life and work.Various chapters examine Clifton’s treatment of the body as a site of both joy and danger, spirituality, and an interrogation of American history, politics, and popular culture. The result of Ali’s scholarship and care highlights a dazzling array of Clifton’s poetic techniques and forms that will continue to inspire poets, readers, and Lucille Clifton fans—past, present and future—for decades to come.

At the Gate gathers more than seventy previously unpublished poems by the iconic American poet Lucille Clifton written over the last two decades of her life. Discovered in digital archives by poet and scholar Kazim Ali, these poems span a prolific and reflective period in Clifton’s career as she shifted from typewriters to word processors and desktop computers. Many were originally drafted for publication, but set aside—until now.Edited by Ali, this collection includes a contextual Foreword and detailed notes that illuminate Clifton’s late writing process and the editorial journey of these poems—deepening and expanding the themes that defined Clifton’s celebrated body of work. At the Gate is a profound and necessary addition to Clifton’s legacy—one that reaffirms her place as a poet of the body, the spirit, and the deep truths that we must endure—her voice as intimate, fearless, and luminous as ever.

At the Gate gathers more than seventy previously unpublished poems by the iconic American poet Lucille Clifton written over the last two decades of her life. Discovered in digital archives by poet and scholar Kazim Ali, these poems span a prolific and reflective period in Clifton’s career as she shifted from typewriters to word processors and desktop computers. Many were originally drafted for publication, but set aside—until now.Edited by Ali, this collection includes a contextual Foreword and detailed notes that illuminate Clifton’s late writing process and the editorial journey of these poems—deepening and expanding the themes that defined Clifton’s celebrated body of work. At the Gate is a profound and necessary addition to Clifton’s legacy—one that reaffirms her place as a poet of the body, the spirit, and the deep truths that we must endure—her voice as intimate, fearless, and luminous as ever.