Kazim Ali – författare

Kazim Ali’s latest collection uses a migrant geography to explore how the self moves through grief.

The Man in 119, the latest collection from accomplished poet Kazim Ali, explores loss and grief, alongside the human body and the natural world. Here, the tongue becomes a collaboration between human and glacial current, the human body—a “tectonic topography of god.” Grappling with his mother’s death, alongside philosophical questions of immortality, Ali asks what we become when we leave this world: “earth or sky or memory only”? With musicality and minimal punctuation, these poems offer vignettes of various geographies, individuals, and memories. We learn that like migration, the body moves, it reproduces itself through the experience of losing and living still.

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

From the Bible to the Quaraan, the fortieth day symbolizes the last moment before deliverance, a moment in time when a supplicant or prophet or stormbeaten passenger knows there is no state “after,” but finally accepts the present state as a permanent one.

In The Fortieth Day, Kazim Ali follows the fractured narratives and moving lyrics of his debut collection, The Far Mosque, with a deeply spiritual and meditative book exploring the rhetoric of prayer.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and raised in an Islamic household. He holds degrees from the University at Albany and New York University. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

From the Bible to the Quaraan, the fortieth day symbolizes the last moment before deliverance, a moment in time when a supplicant or prophet or stormbeaten passenger knows there is no state “after,” but finally accepts the present state as a permanent one.

In The Fortieth Day, Kazim Ali follows the fractured narratives and moving lyrics of his debut collection, The Far Mosque, with a deeply spiritual and meditative book exploring the rhetoric of prayer.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and raised in an Islamic household. He holds degrees from the University at Albany and New York University. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

These gently fragmented narrative lyrics pursue enlightenment in long, elegant yet plain-spoken, dark yet ecstatic lines. Ali travels by water and by night, seeking the Far Mosque and its overarching paradox: that when God and Self are one, an ascent into Heaven is a voyage within.

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 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 for decades to come.