Pluviophile, Yusuf
Saadi
Nightwood Editions,
2020
2021 Griffin Poetry Prize • Canadian Shortlist
The 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize will be announced on June
23, 2021.
I’m curious as to your work with the sonnet. What first drew you to the sonnet, and what do you feel the form allowed that might not have been possible otherwise?
I was writing love poems — not for people as much as for things i.e. light, a hijab, etc. — and for whatever reason the sonnet as I use it (mine are more quasi-sonnets at best than real ones) felt right. It just seems like the perfect number of lines; it forces you to be compact, but there’s also so much room within its frames to mess around with sound and image. It always astounds me how versatile the form is; it’s incredible how much Yeats could pack into “Leda and the Swan,” an interpretation of the entire historical trajectory of Western civilization.
There isn’t a great origin story here; I followed the modest route of many writers. Initially, I was writing individual poems and sending them out to literary journals. I didn’t have a collection or central themes thought out while I was doing this — having an entire collection completed, yet alone published, seemed very far away. Once I had a bunch of individual poems, I published a chapbook with Vallum. Then once I had enough poems that it felt substantial, I thought, why not try to send it to some publishers? This was over about a seven-year span. It seemed to work out. My publisher, and particularly Silas White, is more responsible for the actual order of the poems in the collection — he saw a rhyme and reason for how the poems are placed whereas the initial manuscript’s order as I sent it was quite arbitrary. I did insist that the current first poem in the collection, Love Sonnet for Light, be the opening poem, as it’s one of the poems I’m happiest with. I also struggled a lot with the title of the collection — I wonder sometimes if people like it then try to shut that thought out.
What first brought you to poetry?
I always wanted to be a fiction writer as that’s mostly what I read when younger (and still mostly what I mostly read). When I took a few creative writing classes in my undergrad, writing poetry just felt more natural to me. I suspect it has to do with not having the responsibility of writing character or plot; the poem’s narrative can be more imagistic, more associative and non-linear. I think I also enjoy revising on the nitty-gritty level of individual words, syllables, and letters, which is what so much of writing and revising poetry is. The language itself is the focus. That’s not to say that fiction writers don’t do that, of course, but it feels easier to me to work at the line-level in, say, a 14-line poem, than a 300-page book.
So perhaps I should ask you of both poetry and fiction: what works of either do you see as influences on the poems in Pluviophile?
I’d say … Anne Michaels, Wallace Stevens, David Foster Wallace, Derek Mahon. It’s lame to say because I don’t know German and my Spanish is rudimentary, but Rilke and Borges and Marquez. I think in the background, also religious texts like the Koran.
Have you been writing much in the way of poetry since Pluviophile was completed? What have you been working on since?
The
pandemic hasn’t been kind to my mental health or productivity. I have about 5
drafts of poems I’m working on. One of them is forthcoming in Brick this
winter; it’s loosely based on a Bengali poet named Jibonanondo Das. I’ve a few
other things starting to emerge, but I’m worried if I talk about them, I’ll
never actually write them. I feel like I’ve spent a lot more time thinking and
talking and proposing plans about writing over the last year than actually
writing. It’s been really hard to find quiet around me and in my head lately —
not sure if others are experiencing the same thing?
