| Note |
Joanne Leow: And you’re really actually pointing a really difficult way of expressing how we exist right now in so many different spaces at the same time. Maybe one last question. When you’re thinking of contestations of space, in the city, in the waterfront, and you were talking a little bit about that, about condo developers, and asking people, “Be bold! … Make sure you get in on the rush!” When you’re thinking of those contestations, and specifically for yourself and your work, and you said you felt this responsibility to critique it, not just responsibility to critique, but how do you think your poetry enables you to inhabit the space differently?
(0:37)
Shazia Hafiz Ramji: That’s really difficult, because sometimes it feels futile, because I feel—I always worry that my poems are not going to be accessible to everybody, or that they’re going to be perceived as too avant-garde, or too this or too that, whatever, right? But I…I feel like it’s the least that I can do, because there’s nothing else that I can do, really, except put my body in these sites and feel and think and articulate things, because articulating is half the problem. Once you’ve articulated something, then it gives you the power to take it back. So I feel like that was, that was half the battle for me (laughs). |