Five minutes with poet Sara M Saleh
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Sara M Saleh’s new poetry collection, The Flirtation of Girls, is powerful, political, bold and beautiful, and since the events of October 7 2023 in the Middle East, it has gained even more relevance.
Sara took five minutes out to talk through her writing and activism.
Your book was pertinent before, but since October 7 2023 it has taken on even more relevance. Do you think it will be a useful way of explaining the Palestinian experience to a new audience?
As I was reading the poem subtitled 1948 at a recent launch, it dawned on me that this poem could have been written about Gaza right now, and this really speaks to the ongoing nature of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and the violence we have been brutally subjected to day in, day out, for decades.
Poetry is the daughter of history, Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish says. Because poetry as a medium does not need to go back into history and yet can bring so much clarity, it can serve as an important personal and political intervention.
So, I hope this collection is an opening, that it moves people into a different type of seeing, of understanding what is happening in Palestine right now even without going into the full detail of it. I hope it serves as a portal and readers exit transformed.
Why is poetry your genre of choice? What can it do that other genres can’t?
Poems are so bare – nothing is hidden, down to a phrase, a word, a comma on the page (or lack thereof)…there is little room for dishonesty.
In poetry, there are also opportunities to play, to deviate from genre conventions a lot more than I would in other genres, and it compels me to push past what I know, to name what is nameless and give shape to the shapeless. It is an invitation for reimagining.
And on the process: how do you refine your words to be so concise? How do you approach a huge topic and get it down to just a page (or so) of pertinent lines?
As part of my ethic and artistic practice, I always begin with intention. Whatever the subject matter, I feel a responsibility to it, to honour it, to be the most honest I can be. I ask myself why I am writing this work, and if I am even the right person to write it, and if this is the best medium for this particular message. I also feel a responsibility to my craft, am I the best writer I can be? Then the excavating begins.
Some days I come to a poem based on a single word, some days it’s another poem I have read and loved, and other days it’s a form I want to try or an issue on my mind. The business of poetry is just as much about making and constructing and assembling and reassembling, as much as it is about deconstructing and dismantling, brick by brick. It’s about failing at form and bending and breaking language and syntax and space. It’s continuous and you just need to know when to exit the poem. I also think poems are meant to be recited, read out loud and that’s part of the refining process.
There’s a lot of solidarity in this collection, from the references to different colonised or exiled peoples, through to the solidarity of your communities — is solidarity the ultimate for you in life and politics?
I considered solidarity as a political philosophy and way of being and moving in the world, until recently, a friend and fellow writer lisa luxx*, introduced me to the work of Amahl Bishara who writes about overcoming fractures in our liberation movement. Bishara prefers the use of talahum over at-tadahuum (solidarity), because talahum insinuates more than cohesion, but a moving as one skin/one flesh/one body, whereas solidarity insinuates a separateness that is attempting to be overcome.
We must consider our own freedoms as inexplicably tied up.
Also, writers who are exiled are often put in the same category, are often expected to perform that, but I also think we can come to this with the intention of about creating a space, a house/a bayt (which means a line of poetry in Arabic), made up of the work of poets and the infinite possibilities they can present. That’s the ultimate for me.
What writings /pop culture guided /inspired you during the writing of The Flirtation of Girls? Or perhaps gave sweet relief ?!
The writings of Nikky Finney, Jeanine Leane, Jazz Money, Safia ElHillo, Warsan Shire, Zeina Hashem Beck, Evelyn Araluen, Anne Carson, Ocean Vuong…And lots of song…the songs of Fairouz and Abdel Halim in particular.
What’s on your TBR?
The Body Country by Susie Anderson and I’m halfway through Bliss Montage by Ling Ma.
The Flirtation of Girls is published by UQP and available now through all good bookshops.
*lower caps deliberate.
Feature image: Credit Stefanie Zingsheim.
