I had the joy of sitting down with an old friend, the poet and thinker Kazim Ali. Our conversation drifted the way real friendship does — through feminism and literature, into questions of consciousness and creativity, and then deeper still, into the realms of mothers and mortality, what it means to be human, and how we carry all of it in our daily lives. It’s less an interview than a shared remembering, a weaving together of voices that have known each other a long time. I invite you to listen as we circle around tenderness, loss, imagination, and the wonder of simply being here.
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including several volumes of poetry, novels, and translations. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water.
