Kaveh Akbar & Kazim Ali Discuss Ancestors, AWP, & Identifying as Muslim Writers in the Age of Trump

Over at the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Kazim Ali and Kaveh Akbar engage in a wonderful conversation about their entries into the literary community and the space that they occupy as Muslim writers in the U.S. poetry scene. They begin with a discussion about their shared love of yoga. Kazim: "I taught yoga at AWP this year. On the one hand, it was really amazing to mix two of my loves, writing and yoga, but it was also just a lot of time. When I’m at AWP, I feel like I need to focus on what it’s for. Someday, someone will invite us to read together and we can hang out in the hotel and do yoga." Let's pick up with them from there: 

Kaveh: I would love that—that would be amazing. But, you were talking about AWP and something that I think might be of interest to people is the Muslim Caucus.

Kazim: It was kind of amazing.

Kaveh: It was incredible. The density of Muslim writers who inhabited both of these worlds with us was a greater density than I ever, ever, ever in my wildest dreams imagined I would encounter in this world.

Kazim: I want to know what it’s like for you, because I came up alone, and I knew no other Muslim writers. Agha Shahid Ali was there, but he was inaccessible to me. It wasn’t like I could just sit in a room with him and chat with him about this stuff, and when I did chat with him we came at it from extremely different angles. And so the sense of community, of being in a room of plurality and multiplicity of other Muslims, never existed for me. In a way, that was how I approached the poetry because I could do whatever I wanted with it, you know—there weren’t other Muslim poets writing about Ramadan, for example, or namaz.

Now, I’m gonna be really frank with you, if I can, might as well be—[joking] it’s not like we’re on the record or anything—but now it’s weird for me. I think I may have been one of the very very few younger Muslim poets writing and publishing and now there are many, so many—young Muslim writers out there all writing the poems from the cultural perspectives we all share. And for me in the beginning, there wasn’t anybody else doing that kind of work. And now, you’re out there, Tarfia [Faizullah] is out there, many many other people are out there who are kind of wrestling with and engaging with this stuff in the poetry, and to an extent where I kind of feel like now I don’t have this pressure to constantly write about things from Islamic perspectives. But at least a small part of it is like, Oh, this is what it feels like when you are unique and then suddenly you aren’t anymore. You know what I mean? It is a little bit of a new feeling for me. Now I exist in a “context” and I didn’t before.

Kaveh: No, no, totally, I think that that’s fascinating. I think that you are someone who definitely opened that window so that people like me and people like Fatimah Asghar and people like Tarfia and Hanif [Willis-Abdurraqib] and all of us could climb through.

Kazim: You are kind to say that but I don’t think it is true. I feel like for the past twelve years I’ve been publishing and I never once heard, “We need more Muslim voices out there” from a publisher or a festival organizer. That’s new—that’s since Trump. You and Fati and others came up through the very same barriers that I faced. I do not think my presence made it any easier for you. Khalid Mattawa and Fady Joudah are two other Muslim writers out there, it’s true they have been very successful, but on account of their writing more than their identity, I believe. There are other Muslim writers out there, but they have not gotten a broad exposure. Abdal-Hayy Moore, who passed away recently, was comrades with the original Beats; [Moore] had been working that whole time, but did not achieve a wide recognition, so I don’t necessarily think there has been a big opening from the literary mainstream to Muslim writers. There’s been a political response to Trump, but is that a genuine opening of doors, or is just a politically based reaction? I’m not sure. I definitely don’t think you owe me anything. I think you guys have been doing it independently. I think we all came up on our own. I don’t think I opened any windows for anybody. I think I could have done a lot better, actually. I should have done more.

Kaveh: I think you kind of primed the poetry world for the vernacular we’re using now. I’m not trying to argue that there’s any sort of mainstream attention to be had in any direction.

Kazim: Well, there definitely wasn’t for me. And you are very kind to see my work with generosity. I met a queer nonfiction writer recently, she read an essay about all the different ways there are to be a Muslim. She is queer and she covers. (I almost said “but she covers”—that’s what I’ve earned with my life, the “and” instead of the “but”). And after her reading—I was weeping—I put my arms around her and whispered into her ear “I have been waiting a long time for you.” I finally feel not alone. At any rate, I don’t feel good about receiving mainstream attention because Donald Trump is in power.

Kaveh: Right! But that’s so real now. I feel like the demand for our voices has become so much higher in this way that has everything to do with our proximity to danger. Hanif was speaking about this in our caucus meeting. We are now suddenly this group that is very visibly proximal to an imminent political and bodily danger at the hands of a state and at the hands of the people who are drinking the state’s Kool Aid. Suddenly there’s a lot more editorial interest in what Muslim writers are up to.

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