Tariq Malik : part five

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Andrea Cohen’s minimal and elegant poetry demonstrates how few words are required to communicate effectively, Valzhyna Mort uncovers unexpected layers of resonance in the state of mind of a character performing a mundane task, Yusuf Saadi invents words and phrases when traditional language fails him. 

Tariq Malik : part four

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

Poetry compresses the time, thought and emotion of a lived experience so that it is able to resonate beyond its spatial and temporal frame. Poetry, thus, allows its reader to relive and recreate the heightened state of mental and emotional arousal in a distant future. 

Tariq Malik : part three

How does your work first enter the world? 

I have developed a form of bi-phasic sleep, where no matter what time I go to sleep at night, I am awake after midnight for a few hours during which I read poetry that inspires me. The reverberations that this activity sets off puts me in a certain frame of mind that is conducive to creative writing, a kind of sympathetic resonance from which new ideas materialize, and old ones emerge set in new patterns. Once I have set down the newly emerging pattern of words, I am able to return to sleep; over the subsequent nights and days I am able to polish the evolving work.

Tariq Malik : part two

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

When I initially began reading and writing poetry on a personal level, I did not demand anything of it beyond its surface beauty. Now, the nature of my poetry has evolved where it has to resonate beyond the immediate page, and reveal new layers of meaning and engagement beyond the surface. I want readers to obsess over its content and keep returning to engage with it.

Tariq Malik : part one

Pakistan-born, Vancouver-based BIPOC author Tariq Malik works across poetry, fiction, and art to distill immersive, compelling, and original narratives. His working English is a borrowed tongue inflected with his inherited languages of Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi. He writes intensely in response to the world in flux around him and from his place in its shadows. He came reluctantly late to these shores, having had to first survive three wars, two migrations, and two decades of slaving in the Kuwaiti desert. 

Author: Rainsongs of Kotli and Chanting Denied Shores. Debut poetry collection Exit Wounds to be published by Caitlin Press on 16 September 2022.

What are you working on?

My new poetry is evolving under the working title of Kotli Petrichor. It is based on the microcosm of my 1000 year-old ancestral Punjabi hometown of Kotli, and reflects on the lives of its inhabitants as they encounter global subjects of displacement, social inequality, injustice, and social exploitation.