If Areej’s Poetry Editor is the door and Asmara’s Associate Poetry Editor is the key, Sana Tanveer’s Deputy Poetry Editor is the lock that stands in all poets’ way. Set her mind aglow, and you’re in.
People always tell us to choose. I personally think that it is one of the inherent human flaws to try to make a pattern out of chaos, to try to simplify things, to make sense of what invariably is a random process of development or evolution. Sometimes, I believe, it is better to let the pattern unfold rather than try to straighten it out.
However, other times it is necessary to choose when you come to a fork in the woods. Otherwise, borrowing words from the great Dante, you could end up lost in those dark woods in the middle of the journey of your life.
So it was when four years ago, I sat down to think about what to do with myself. I could have tried to become a sculptor; I could be a singer, a doctor, a mystic, a rebel, a revolutionary, a sportsperson, a musician, an artist, a scientist, and all that comes to mind under God’s blue skies.
I decided to be the sculptor, the mystic, the rebel, the revolutionary, and all that I wanted to be by becoming a writer, someone who, is capable of being everything under God’s blue skies.
When I joined Augsburg College in the US to do my Bachelors in English, I was all set to focus on Fiction since that was all I had ever done. However, two semesters of taking poetry made me realize that my true love lay in breathing rhyme and rhythm together on paper. When Maryam Piracha offered the position of Deputy Poetry Editor, however, I was extremely surprised and honored since I hadn’t considered myself anything more than a student of poetry. I am hoping that eight years of studying English Literature will aid me in doing justice to this position.
That is what I was, am, and want to be, and the rest is what will come.
In the words of the great Persian mystic, Omer Khayyam “the moving hand, having writ, moves on…”