Sophia Naz
Sophia Naz is a bilingual poet, artist, author, and translator. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, in 2016 for creative nonfiction and in 2018 for poetry. Her work has featured in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Poetry Daily, The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, The Night Heron Barks, Singing in the Dark:A Global Anthology of Poetry Under Lockdown, Berfrois,The Bombay Literary Magazine, Rattle, The Punch Magazine, Poetry At Sangam, The Adirondack Review, The Wire, Chicago Quarterly Review, Blaze Vox, Scroll, Cafe Dissensus, RAIOT, Ideas And Futures, Chapati Mystery, Guftugu, Pratik, Gallerie International, Coldnoon, VAYAVYA, The Bangalore Review, Papercuts, Madras Courier, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry and many others. She has authored the poetry collections; Peripheries (Cyberhex 2015), Pointillism (Copper Coin 2017) Date Palms (City Press 2017) Open Zero (Yoda Press 2021), and Shehnaz, a biography (Penguin Random House 2019). Bark Archipelago ( Weavers Press, San Francisco & Red River India 2023) is her fifth collection of poetry. She lives in Glen Ellen, a small village in Northern California and her website is www.sophianaz.com
Sun Sonata
Urdu sun doesn't rhyme with one
it’s not a snug homonym to sweep
under the rug in Queen’s English but
a missing corps, a story sung, that like the sea, returns
and weaves an amputee’s opposable thumbs
to heinous colonial sum - a strain of muslin
made extinct, whites stained beyond
redress, many moons lost
their sound wealth to His Master’s Voice
and must chute their mouth to an anglophone
sonic without a parallel longitude, phantom limb
in between suck of spun and tune of spoon
sun in Urdu means to listen, or be numb
a temporary deafness, as if a bomb had gone
off or the slow death of touch
turned to an eternity of stone.
Urdu sun doesn't rhyme with one
it’s not a snug homonym to sweep
under the rug in Queen’s English but
a missing corps, a story sung, that like the sea, returns
and weaves an amputee’s opposable thumbs
to heinous colonial sum - a strain of muslin
made extinct, whites stained beyond
redress, many moons lost
their sound wealth to His Master’s Voice
and must chute their mouth to an anglophone
sonic without a parallel longitude, phantom limb
in between suck of spun and tune of spoon
sun in Urdu means to listen, or be numb
a temporary deafness, as if a bomb had gone
off or the slow death of touch
turned to an eternity of stone.
Poems
Poetry Daily
https://poems.com/poem/ghazal-skin/
The Bombay Literary Magazine
https://bombaylitmag.com/sashiko-and-other-poems/
The Punch Magazine
https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/poetry/the-poetry-issue-2022-storm-and-other-poems
Poetry Daily
https://poems.com/poem/ghazal-skin/
The Bombay Literary Magazine
https://bombaylitmag.com/sashiko-and-other-poems/
The Punch Magazine
https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/poetry/the-poetry-issue-2022-storm-and-other-poems
Reviews
The Bombay Literary Magazine
https://bombaylitmag.com/wound-therapy-vigilance-in-sophia-nazs-poetry-by-uttaran-das-gupta/
The Wire
https://thewire.in/books/the-leisurely-art-of-the-goldsmith-applied-to-language-sophia-nazs-date-palms
Beltway Poetry Quarterly
https://www.beltwaypoetry.com/language-a-double-meaning-bow-sophia-nazs-bark-archipelago-reviewed-by-shweta-rao-garg/
The Bombay Literary Magazine
https://bombaylitmag.com/wound-therapy-vigilance-in-sophia-nazs-poetry-by-uttaran-das-gupta/
The Wire
https://thewire.in/books/the-leisurely-art-of-the-goldsmith-applied-to-language-sophia-nazs-date-palms
Beltway Poetry Quarterly
https://www.beltwaypoetry.com/language-a-double-meaning-bow-sophia-nazs-bark-archipelago-reviewed-by-shweta-rao-garg/
Interviews
The Bangalore Review
https://bangalorereview.com/2024/02/roots-and-resonance-a-conversation-between-two-poets-monica-mody-and-sophia-naz/
Rattle
Rattlecast 123 - Sophia Naz
Red River Podcasts
Red River Sessions -Sophia Naz in conversation with Sunil Bhandari
Interview on Women's Web
http://bit.ly/SophiaNaz
Interview on Indian Cultural Forum
https://indianculturalforum.in/2017/11/23/choosing-exile-poems-of-loss-and-displacement/
The Bangalore Review
https://bangalorereview.com/2024/02/roots-and-resonance-a-conversation-between-two-poets-monica-mody-and-sophia-naz/
Rattle
Rattlecast 123 - Sophia Naz
Red River Podcasts
Red River Sessions -Sophia Naz in conversation with Sunil Bhandari
Interview on Women's Web
http://bit.ly/SophiaNaz
Interview on Indian Cultural Forum
https://indianculturalforum.in/2017/11/23/choosing-exile-poems-of-loss-and-displacement/
Other Links
Modpo Minute at Kelly Writers House
ModPo Minute with Professor Al Filreis, ModPo TA Anna Strong and Sophia Naz
Photo Essay at Usawa Literary Review
https://www.usawa.in/issue-11/everything-grows-out-of-everything-else-by-sophia-naz/
Out of Print; The Short Story online
The Sea and the Cometary, by Sophia Naz
Modpo Minute at Kelly Writers House
ModPo Minute with Professor Al Filreis, ModPo TA Anna Strong and Sophia Naz
Photo Essay at Usawa Literary Review
https://www.usawa.in/issue-11/everything-grows-out-of-everything-else-by-sophia-naz/
Out of Print; The Short Story online
The Sea and the Cometary, by Sophia Naz
Contact:
Email: [email protected]
Website/Blog: www.trancelucence.net & http://rootsandwings.tumblr.com
Email: [email protected]
Website/Blog: www.trancelucence.net & http://rootsandwings.tumblr.com
Mini Interview (2019)
Your poetics?
A poet is the eye of the needle that stitches the seamless fabric of language into a new address. A bilingual poet such as myself uses a twin set of needles to knit a unique yarn, a polyglot palimpsest drawing attention not just to meanings explicit in the poetic text but to subtext and texture, somewhat like the Impressionists who dismantled painting’s centuries old focus on a hierarchy of persons and objects depicted and shifted it the materiality of the medium.
Your influences?
My influences are numerous and wide ranging, from the poetry riddles of Amir Khusro, the 13th century master of the double entendre, to Faiz Ahmed Faiz who transmogrified the classical tropes of the ghazal into masterpieces of political protest, the taboo shattering frankness of Famida Riaz, to the contemplative Zen haiku of Matsuo Basho, to Latin American poets including Neruda, Paz, Cortazar and Jaime Sabines. Among female poets of the subcontinent, Imtiaz Dharkar, distilled perfectly my own feelings of suffocation and rebellion. Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish for their evocative writings on exile and loss. Among writers Anais Nin, Marguerite Yourcenar, Olga Broumas, Audre Lorde have inspired me, so has Saadat Hasan Manto. They both dealt with taboos of their day and with people at the margins of so-called respectable society.
Why is the Matwaala fest and collective relevant and needed?
I was completely blown away by Yogesh Patel’s interview and astounded that I had not heard of him until Matwaala highlighted his work. It is so crucial for poets of the South Asian diaspora to be aware of each other and of the work that they are doing. Each of us are dealing with the complexities of our hyphenated identities and (m)othertongues in our own way and listening to and supporting each other through an initiative like Matwaala is both intellectually rewarding and collectively empowering.
A poet is the eye of the needle that stitches the seamless fabric of language into a new address. A bilingual poet such as myself uses a twin set of needles to knit a unique yarn, a polyglot palimpsest drawing attention not just to meanings explicit in the poetic text but to subtext and texture, somewhat like the Impressionists who dismantled painting’s centuries old focus on a hierarchy of persons and objects depicted and shifted it the materiality of the medium.
Your influences?
My influences are numerous and wide ranging, from the poetry riddles of Amir Khusro, the 13th century master of the double entendre, to Faiz Ahmed Faiz who transmogrified the classical tropes of the ghazal into masterpieces of political protest, the taboo shattering frankness of Famida Riaz, to the contemplative Zen haiku of Matsuo Basho, to Latin American poets including Neruda, Paz, Cortazar and Jaime Sabines. Among female poets of the subcontinent, Imtiaz Dharkar, distilled perfectly my own feelings of suffocation and rebellion. Nizar Qabbani and Mahmoud Darwish for their evocative writings on exile and loss. Among writers Anais Nin, Marguerite Yourcenar, Olga Broumas, Audre Lorde have inspired me, so has Saadat Hasan Manto. They both dealt with taboos of their day and with people at the margins of so-called respectable society.
Why is the Matwaala fest and collective relevant and needed?
I was completely blown away by Yogesh Patel’s interview and astounded that I had not heard of him until Matwaala highlighted his work. It is so crucial for poets of the South Asian diaspora to be aware of each other and of the work that they are doing. Each of us are dealing with the complexities of our hyphenated identities and (m)othertongues in our own way and listening to and supporting each other through an initiative like Matwaala is both intellectually rewarding and collectively empowering.