Shazia Hafiz Ramji : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

Great question! Poetry is quite close to music for me, but I haven't been able to speak about it in a way that makes sense. Often, when I'm overwhelmed by the need to write a poem, it manifests itself as a need to sing. I think this is why my poems begin with a choke-feeling in the throat, as if I were about to cry, or as if I need to say something urgently but can't say it. Sometimes when I feel a poem coming, I need to noodle around on the guitar and sing a bit, and then I'll write. The writing is often much clearer after I've played music.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji : part four

What do you find most difficult about writing poetry?

It's scary and it hurts; my poems don't allow me to lie to myself.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji : part three

What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?

Poems can also convey understanding through rhythm and cadence, much like a prayer or a chant. This kind of knowledge feels occult, primal, and necessary for me, but it's elusive outside of poetry. Poems can also convey the specificity of experience in a way that I don't think other forms can, possibly because poetry enacts sensory, synesthetic experiences and allows for layered, non-linear ways of understanding.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

I used to write very quiet and minimal poems that relied on imagery. They were always personal and philosophical. I think that the more I've written, the more risks I've taken in terms of expanding my poetry's engagement with the world i.e. with narrative, with histories, with time, with place. Poems continue to (attempt to) express the inexpressible, but they can also discover, mend, and make.

Shazia Hafiz Ramji : part one

Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s first book, Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was one of CBC's best Canadian poetry books of 2018. Her fiction and criticism have appeared in The Humber Literary Review and Quill & Quire, respectively. She will be a writer in residence with Open Book in March 2019. She lives on unceded Coast Salish land (Vancouver) where she began the Intersections Reading Group and where she works as a publishing consultant and editor for various presses across Canada.

How do you know when a poem is finished?

I know a poem is finished when I feel something similar to the feeling of telling someone else what you think of them honestly, and then still being accepted by them for who you are and what you think.

Sometimes, when I look at a poem a week or so after writing it, I wonder how I wrote it. I take surprise as a good sign that it's finished. If I can find my way back into the poem, it's not finished.