Shehrbano Naqvi is a Pakistani writer who is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at The New School. In honour of her late brother, her work primarily explores the themes of mental health and grief, while also contributing to discourses around identity, social inequalities and cultural movements that define the 21st century. Writing under the name @banoqvi on Instagram, her work has also appeared in Poets Reading The News, Rue Scribe, Eunoia Review, and The Tempest, and she has performed on stages in Pakistan, Italy, and the USA.
You can read Grieving is a Privilege and Ghar Ghar/Playing House in the April 2024 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
I write a lot about grief, and both these poems represent the different ways we meditate upon the presence of grief in our lives. Inspired by our childlike desire to play pretend, my poem Ghar Ghar is an expression of immense loss in light of literally moving out of our childhood home, as well as feeling lost in an alien world after my brother’s death. The next poem, Grieving is a Privilege begins with a mediation on personal loss and the rituals around it, but it is written against the backdrop of incredible suffering. Reflecting on the ongoing Palestinian genocide specifically, this poem suggests that the space and the ability to grieve, is also a privilege in itself.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
The poem Ghar Ghar is written as a prose poem to mimic the winding stream of consciousness and confusion upon reckoning with a world that I did not recognise without my older brother. I have shared this piece publicly as spoken word recently as well, and the prose form lends to the momentum and build up of the performance.
Grieving is a Privilege, on the other hand, has a slower pace to it; not only due to the couplets, but also the [caesuras] within the lines that allow the reader to pause. I wanted this poem to create more ‘space’ for the reader to reflect on the sentiment of loss as the piece unfolded, and to maintain the element of shock when the narrative zooms out to a wider lens.
Do you have a collection of poetry or even a single poem that acts as a touchstone?
My favourite poem to date is What The Living Do by Marie Howe. The speaker’s voice, the mundanity in the poem, and the lingering sense of loss, are all symbolic of my motivation to write about my brother in the first place.
If you didn’t write poetry, how do you think you might access the same fulfillments that poetry offers in your life?
Writing as a whole keeps me grounded in myself and has acted like a navigation device over the course of my life. But poetry specifically feels like a larger-than-life, spiritual practice, so if I were to ever find a replacement, it would need to be something that also creates room for a little magic and divinity in an otherwise monotonous human experience.
How do you revise your work?
I am grateful to be part of an incredible group of poets in my current MFA program. We often share our work with each other whenever we feel too close to the poem or the content, which can be such a blessing. But revision in general usually requires some distance from my work for a couple of weeks before I can look at it with a renewed perspective.
As a poet, what does creative success or achievement look like for you?
I suppose this depends on one’s intent for each piece when they write it. Sometimes a poem is meant just for me – to figure something out, to vent, to share a secret, to play – and if that is achieved, then that is that poem’s success. Other times, the intent is to share a message with an audience or contribute to a discourse I feel passionately about, and once that is achieved in some shape or form, it’s a success.
What are you working on now?
I am currently working on my first book, which will have prose and poetry in conversation with each other. Grounded in my family’s experience of losing my older brother, it aims to explore the poltical, religious, cultural, and social influences on mental health, suicide, and grief.
Are there other art forms that inspire or inform your poetry?
I take a lot of inspiration from the rhythm of Sufi music as well as the lyricism of Urdu poetry. Although my formal education growing up was heavily Westernized and therefore created a distance between myself and my roots, it has been a privilege to invest in that education independently as it embodies the spiritual connection I have and nurture with poetry.