Editor’s note: Following tradition, No, Dear invited two poets from the Border issue to discuss the theme in an effort to uncover another layer of the topic. We invited Amatan Noor and Alejandro Heredia pre-Covid 19 pandemic to have this conversation. They started it, and then we all went into quarantine. Recently they picked up again, although perhaps not quite where they left off, given the enormity of the circumstances. One of the prompts No, Dear used was to ask the poets to start by delving into their poems in the issue. We are honored to have Alejandro Heredia and Amatan Noor discussing their work in our Border issue.
Alejandro: So glad to be discussing your work further. I find it a rare opportunity to collaborate with you, and hope we can find some thought, emotion, and movement through this dialogue.
First, I'd like to point out that I was struck by the conflict between mental health and faith/religion in your piece. I think this is such an important conversation to unfold. It's layered. I think about how my grandmother and folks before her used to religion and faith to get through some traumatic life experiences. War, poverty, violence of all kinds. I've seen firsthand how religion has given people the tools to make meaning of our lives.
Equally, I've seen people try to use their religion to smooth over conflicts and life experiences that prayer alone cannot erase. The piece highlights the narrator's desire to validate their parents' and peoples' experiences while also grappling with how different their needs are from previous generations. I wonder how much we're actually honoring the people that came before us when we pretend that everything that worked for them will work for us. I am suspicious of any practice, religious or not so, that suggests we should forfeit our wellbeing, health, and lives for the sake of tradition.
I'm curious. After writing this piece, did you feel you could write about faith and mental health more harmoniously? Or are you still working through what it might look like to honor both in the same sentence/poem/breath?
Amatan: I am equally eager to delve into your work in greater detail. I am looking forward to extracting light from our conversation.
Thank you for your empathetic observation of my work. I am moved by your empathy in my struggles of choosing faith and mental health.
I would like to begin by stating what might seem obvious – the search for inner peace through faith-based and medicinal methods and their battles has been a journey. I have traveled to extreme ends of both spectrums where I have abandoned my faith for large periods of time, considering it an obstacle in the quest of my happiness. Other times, I have only hung on to faith because I considered it to be the only answer me and my kin before me have known.
These days, I am searching for harmony- both within myself and the world outside. I am trying to portray that harmony in my work as well. We are living in a time and society where marginalized folks are made to feel unsafe in their expressions of love, faith, existence in general. As a follower of Islam, I find that my community is struggling flourish amid the Islamophobia that is prevalent in sentiments as well as legislation. Therefore, I find it crucial to be resilient; to try to exude to the peace I feel in the form of worship with those who have chosen my God in this land and the next. And I’ve realized I can do so by protecting my peace even when it is through methods foreign to my ancestors.
Your work resonated with me deeply. I was transported to my own narrative of migration and I find a common ground in our mothers’ resilience and fathers’ negligence. The juxtaposition of a lack of romantic love that our mothers deserve but do not receive with the love that they shower their children with is striking. It’s an important conversation to be had among children who are product of migration and residents of the diaspora. I am touched by the affection and admiration you have for your mother and her sacrifices. I am also reminded that our mothers are to be regarded for the entire lives they’ve left behind and not just as mothers and nurturers. Whether it’s Santo Domingo or the bustling streets of Dhaka, I am able to picture our mothers, young, limitless, not bound by society, patriarchy and/or the responsibilities of motherhood for a short period of time. If it were for me, I would stretch those moments into an infinite and gift that forever to my Amma but we are in a different reality now.
My heart is tender from your accounts of separation and heartbreak between your parents. You capture the feeling being the remnant of a world once lived in a palpable way that touches the reader softly. I hope you find solace in reminding yourself that migration is a bitter solution our parents opted for with little choice. I think about migration and its impact on our lives often. It led them to an unfulfilled journey to freedom full of obstacles and marginalization. We are faced with poverty, fatigue, racism and other forms of oppression. Love and fulfillment became secondary in the mindset of survival for my migrant parents. It all makes me wonder-- aside from remembering and storytelling, how can we honor our mothers’ voyages in our work that will provide them with some elements of the affection and fulfillment they lacked?
Alejandro: I like that you say "searching for harmony." Sometimes we think that we have to arrive at peace and then we're done. But the idea of a single arrival is an illusion. Peace, like freedom, is a verb, a practice, something you have to do every day in order to sustain it.
It's so interesting that you found adoration for my mother. When I wrote that poem, I think I was very angry and confused by her. I set out to write this poem because I was trying to understand her pain and why she was lashing some of that out on me. I did want to make sure that I was soft, though. I want to make sure that I let people breathe in my words so that they're not destroyed by my own prejudices. I think I mean to say that if I want to understand my mother more, I have to let her exist on the page beyond my prejudices about her. It's validating that you picked up on adoration even though that's not what I meant to write.
I think a lot about mothers and who they are outside of their roles to serve and provide. I like to say that I'm obsessed with "bad mothers" because I have seen so many women in my life, including my own mother, be crushed under the expectations set upon women to forget they have a life beyond who they are as mothers. My mother was very unwilling to set aside her own desires in order to fit into those roles. I think I deemed her a bad mother for a long time because of this, without having the compassion to understand everything that anti-blackness, colonialism, patriarchy, and intergenerational trauma were weighing on her. We have all these words to understand now. But my mother was just living, sometimes doing her best, sometimes not. The poems are to understand, to forgive, to expand my own capacity for empathy through the privilege of language.
I was very curious about your creative form. I don't think I've ever seen a poem structured like that. How did you come by that idea? Have you continued to use this practice? I feel like I'm not very creative with form and sometimes struggle to choose a form that will amplify the piece, so I was struck and inspired by your piece on the level of form, too.
Amatan: Apologies for the radio silence on my end. It took me some time and effort to adjust to remote work, realign emotionally being distant from friends and family, and cultivate life in the new reality amid the painful impact COVID-19 has had in black and brown communities. Part of me is grateful for a source of income and health and part of me is shaken to my core. I hope you are well and you and yours are safe and healthy.
Returning to the topic of our conversation, I am in awe of the level of empathy you arrive from and much like freedom I can imagine this practice is a work in progress. Our mothers are survivors of worlds that we can imagine but won't quite fully grasp in their full impact. It led me to consider the elements that influenced the obstacles me and my mother faced in navigating our relationship and colonialism, patriarchy, and intergenerational trauma are present in my mother's narrative as well. It's quite unfortunate yet ties together migrants on very similar journeys.
With this particular piece, I wanted to strip my thoughts down to the grave source of my dilemma and this process led to my prescription. Afterwards, something clicked and I was convinced I was going to be able to portray the account in a much more engaging manner by placing the prescribed doses on the paper. I haven't written anything quite in this form since this poem. It's ironic because I struggle with form as well. I haven't had formal education in poetry as a literary form so many of my poems start out in the form of narrative and through the process of revision, evolve and take a form of their own. I am, however, trying to venture out and experiment writing poems with strict forms to expand my skill set in this craft.
I wanted to follow up on a point you make earlier. You refer to language as “privilege” in expanding your empathy. I would love for you to elaborate on this idea of how you landed on the specific term privilege. We are fortunate to reside in a country where free speech is valued and protected. Are you conveying a deeper significance of the word? How does language play a different role in the way you create and communicate now that we are in a newfound reality of the confines of our homes?
Alejandro: I guess when I say "the privilege of language," I am trying to point out that the hardest things to come by in life, and often the most valuable, exist just outside the realm of language. There are so many things we don't have words for, especially when it comes to our internal lives. What we think we think and feel is often just the surface of what's actually inside of us. Does that make sense? I don't mean to get too lost in psychoanalysis, but I do think as writers that's our job, to try to encompass humanity within language as much as we can, understanding that having language for things is a privilege, and that we constantly have to work at expanding our language to keep up with the speed at which society, the planet, our relationships, and our minds move.
For example, until I wrote this poem about my mother, I didn't know that my deep investment in the history of my country had so much to do with my trying to understand my relationship with my mother. I think our lives are always bigger than what language can offer. It's a privilege to find the language that feels closer to the truth, even if the truth is small and fleeting (as truths are constantly changing).
This happens to me in my personal life all the time. I'll sit and write and after working and working I arrive at a thought and reflect, "wow, I had no idea I thought or felt that." I surprise myself when I write, all the time.
Has that ever happened to you? I'm also curious about your revision process. Do you tend to rework your language a lot, or do you just write and allow your words to sit on the page to breathe?
I edit as I go. Even this letter, as I'm writing it, I'm editing the language so that it sounds how I want it to sound, so that my words mean what I intend. Means that I'm a slower writer, but I think this ability to edit as I go is one of my best skills as a writer. And it means I have less to edit when I come back for second drafts haha!
Amatan: Thank you for that detailed, immersive and personal clarification. It’s a wonderful affirmation that processing through language is a tool we are all blessed to use as writers.
I myself processed traumas, past experiences and unresolved feelings through writing, and sat down to write a poem to consequently end up discovering the root and rawness of the urge to write was stemming from. For me, these two things go hand in hand and it’s often tough to pinpoint which occurs first. That’s the beauty of writing. It brings us home when we are grappling with our inner turmoil.
I, too, revise as I write which makes for a much longer arrival to complete storytelling. I guess we are similar that way. I am also a relentless tweaker. I do go in for a second revision, and a third one...and a fourth and so on. I find myself making minor adjustments to wording here and there up until the moment I need to go on stage and recite a poem. I never seem to be at peace. It could have something to do with my experience in slam poetry. I’m not sure if that is something you experience. When are you able to know that you are satisfied with your writing? When can you leave a new piece of work alone knowing that it no longer needs to be revised?
Alejandro: Honestly it never feels like something is finished. I think when a piece is published I go ahead and put it away. There are also times that I feel satisfied with where I've arrived. But almost always, no matter if it's published or not, with enough time I always feel like there's something to add or change about the piece. That's why I love virtual and physical folders! Sometimes it's worth it to just put a piece away, if not I'll keep editing forever.
I know we're running on a deadline, so I wanted to thank you for engaging in this correspondence. So much of our relationship to writing and art is changing with the current pandemic, the protests, etc. Though this conversation has stretched through a few months, it's been great to stay connected to my craft via conversation with you.
Amatan: I love the idea of folders. I am going to try that going forward to break this habit of mine.
Likewise. This conversation was an elongated one due to the current pandemic and protests. It made me appreciate the fact that we were able to keep in touch in spite of everything. I am hoping we use our voices with new-found purpose with the present in mind.