In the Garden: an Interview with Nuha Fariha

Like honest to goodness, real life gardeners, I sat down with Nuha Fariha on a mesh black tarp nailed into the ground, next to our raised gardening bed we’ve dubbed our “Poetry Garden,” full of over grown cantaloupe vines, snap peas, and milkweed that has been growing since the spring to talk about the release of her debut collection, God Mornings, Tiger Nights, which is available at Game Over Books. Here’s the link to the collection: https://www.gameoverbooks.com/product-page/god-mornings-tiger-nights

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P: Nuha, hello! How are you doing?

N: Hi Parker! It’s so good to see you!

P: It’s good to see you, too. I know we haven’t been out here in a while, but I’m excited to talk about your book.

N: Yeah!

P: Before we do that though I feel like we have to explain the origin story of how we met.

N: Of us and of the garden, too.

P: Yes!

N: It’s all tied together, right?

P: Uh-huh.

N: Yeah, I think my first memory of meeting you is that we were both trying to walk home and you knew where you were going and I was lost and just following you along, and I feel like that’s kind of defined our relationship since then. I feel like you’ve been a very clear voice in poetry for me and a very good example for me to follow and learn from. You just have this wide knowledge.

P: I appreciate that.

N: And you’ve introduced me to so many cool poems and poets that I wouldn’t have read otherwise, like Dorothy Chan, and, yeah, I really appreciate our friendship.

P: So we’re here at the poetry garden, I know we started it together, but do you want to explain how this came to be?

N: Well I think you would do a better job of explaining it because you introduced me to this plot of land.

P: Okay, alright, so, for context here, Nuha and I: we like to garden, and I think it was when we were taking Fahima [Ife]’s class, Fahima was like: try to do some project, something cool, and I was like, it would be cool if we did a poetry garden, which is just a way to be in a garden, gardening, forreal. We grew watermelons and tomatoes and okra and stuff, and right now we’ve got cantaloupe--we’ve been neglecting it a little bit--I have anyway--yeah, and this was what, a year ago?

N: Yeah, about a year ago, and we found this land because of your friend, right? Who had to leave LSU because of all its institutional issues, but we’re very grateful to her for cultivating this land for us and passing it on to us, and a big part of this project was also to read poetry to the plants, right?

P: Mhm

N: And to think about the symbiosis between word, art, and life.

P: Right. And so it’s only fitting that we do an interview here at the poetry garden where it all kind of started.

So, Nuha. God Mornings, Tiger Nights. This book was just published this semester [Fall 2023]

N: Uh-huh.

P: You’ve been getting a lot of praise for it. What’s the experience been like having this book out in the world?

N: It’s been interesting. So obviously it’s my first book, so there’s been a lot of things that I had to learn, like for example when you sign a book you’re supposed to cross out your name here [pointing to her name printed on the inside cover of her book]. I don’t know why that is,

P+N: [laughing]

N: but little things like that, and I think that something that’s been super fun is going down to New Orleans and connecting with the local literary scene there. So going to the local independent bookstores and telling them about my work and learning about other local authors. That’s been a lot of fun.

P:That’s very interesting. It’s interesting to me because I think your my first friend that’s ever had a book out, and so it’s amazing to watch you go around doing this and hear about, you know, going to New Orleans one weekend, but then this summer you were kind of touring the book around.

N: I’ve been trying to do some press for it. I was really grateful. I worked with Anaphora Arts as a fellow and they hired their first publicity person, Gena Hartman, so she really helped me understand how to publicize a book because I was in the dark about all of this.

P: Yeah.

N: But she mentioned things like tweeting about the book and sharing different poems and talking about my experiences with them as a way to get the public in. Because, you know, poetry is a dying art. It’s just really difficult to sell a poetry book.

P: I was filling out an application and one of their questions was: why would you be the best candidate for a performing arts director? And I answered, because as a poet, the only way you’re going to reach people is by performing.

N: Exactly.

P: So let’s get into the big, serious question here, Nuha.

N: Yes.

P: The question everybody wants to know.

N: Okay.

P: What is your relationship with poetry?

N: What is my relationship with poetry??

P+N: [laughing]

N: Whoa, okay, that is a very big question. I mean, I think I just love poetry. Poetry is something that sustains me. It gives me a lot of energy, a lot of life. I grew up listening to a lot of spoken word poetry, especially through Button Poetry with Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye. Those two were some of my favorites growing up. And then in college I got to see Ilya Kaminsky perform. I don’t know if you know about him, but he’s a deaf poet, so a lot of how he performs poetry is through his body. He embodies the words, and I think that just inspired me to keep going. I also saw Porsha O. perform a couple years ago and her poetry that talks about the importance of water to the Black community, [which] has been really inspirational to think about, because I come from a land that’s covered by sea, that’s covered by rivers, and thinking about my people’s relationship with the water, and then just globally thinking about everyone’s relationship to the water--I feel like I’m going on a tangent, but all I have to say is that poetry is like water to me.

P: Okay, that is really amazing. That was a great answer. I know you were a fiction writer coming into this LSU world. Has that influenced you at all writing poetry? I know I read “The Doctor’s Wife” originally as fiction, and here it is in your poetry collection.

N: Yeah!

P: I was really excited about that. How has fiction influenced poetry for you, or vice versa?

N: I think, compared to a lot of poets, I like to try to have a narrative arc throughout my poetry. So I like there to be a beginning, a middle, and some sort of ending. I think I borrowed that idea from fiction from that graph that we all learn about stories and how stories have to follow a certain arc. So that’s something that translates over from fiction to the collection itself, because if you think about the collection as a whole, there’s also an arc there. And I hope some sort of emotional release for the reader once they get to the end.

P: This is actually a great answer, because I want to talk about the book itself. God Mornings, Tiger Nights. You’re talking about this beginning, middle, and end arc and I very clearly have three parts to this book.

N: Oh, okay.

P: I’ve been able to locate three parts. So you’ve got this beginning. We start with “In which I see the tiger in a cage.” You’ve got “Abecedarian for Halima’s Nikah.” “Travel Advisory.” “God Sits in Between.” “Border.” “After 9/11.” And what I’m noticing here is a witnessing to violence of different kinds and sitting with that violence, be it the violence of keeping a tiger in a cage. Which, Mike the Tiger [here at LSU] is a Bengal tiger, and I know you’ve talked about how it’s weird coming to Baton Rouge and seeing now--

N: A Bengal tiger locked up, yup.

P: Yeah. Which is a violence that American people have enacted to your culture, and there’s the 9/11 poem, too, which is a quieter poem, but following a huge traumatic event, and also an event that colored Bengali people in the American eyes as well. So I’m noticing, again, there’s a lot of violence in this beginning and witnessing that. The middle, though, is very interesting, because we have a lot of mother relationships. And it’s amazing how this [section] I would classify as the middle, and it’s only ten pages long, but I really feel like there’s a lot of heat and turning in here. And it’s not just a relationship with your mother, but relationships for you as a mother, now, too. Very amazing, and I think this poem, “For the Asymmetrical Center of my Universe,” would be the volta.

N: Okay.

P: Because you have this part where you keep saying “we are here, we are here, we are here.” And it’s a declaration of being here, but also learning to love your pot-la… is that how you say it?

N: Yeah, your potla, it’s your belly.

P: And I love that. It’s an acceptance of yourself and a claiming of being here, which goes into the last part, where it subverts the violence from the beginning and taking that [violence] and using it to claim your stakes here. I particularly love in “Summer Salad” the line that goes “said what the landlord didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.” That’s like the best line right there. So I guess my question here is how are you striking this balance in your poetry? Are you finding that you're doing that intentionally or that this is something that is organically coming out, finding the balance of reclaiming power and finding these tender moments in your book and in the violence that you’re witnessing?

N: Yeah, that’s a great question, and I feel like a lot of my work deals with violence because I exist as a brown body in America. I’ve had to grow up witnessing a lot of violence, and so that comes out in the beginning. What I’ve learned through working with communities and trying to break these structures is that we have to claim ourselves first, and then from there, going about with a mission of love and acceptance, we can go about turning that violence into something positive. I mean, the violence might always be there but it’s [about] the way that we’re looking at it, it’s the way that we can set our relationship to it, and I love that you picked up on that theme carrying out throughout the book, because that’s the journey that I’ve been on, personally. First witnessing this violence, thinking about the impact that it’s had, and then thinking about, well, how can I change this? What can I do in this moment? And the first thing I can do is treat myself with love and respect and then the next thing I can do is start to treat my community with that same love and respect.

P: When you’re writing poetry are there things, especially writing through this violence and witnessing it, are there things that your eye turns to when you’re noticing these moments that come through in the poetry, or just moments that you notice specifically in trying to piece this out for yourself?

N: I think a lot of it, because I’m a woman, is me thinking about how violence impacts womanhood. So, for example, “Halima’s Nikah.” A Nikah is a traditional wedding ceremony and I’m really commenting on how in a lot of traditional weddings it feels like the woman is almost missing. It doesn’t matter if she’s there or not there. And then second from that I also think a lot about how it affects bodies. So I have a poem about the anatomy table. I think a lot of that has to do with my training as a medical student and the knowledge that I now have about how our inner body works. So I do meditate on those issues a lot. I mean just even the process of eating is violent. You take a piece of food, you’re putting it in your mouth, you’re gnashing it up, it gets dissolved in your stomach, and then you’re pumping it through your intestines. It’s a violent process.

P: I’m glad you brought up one of these poems that I had book marked here, “Studies in Bangla.” You mention your biology textbooks, psychology textbooks, and neurology textbooks. That’s a lot of science text books. I feel like we need to go into that, because, like you said, you were a med student. You really down play that here in this book. I don’t think it comes up that explicitly, but you have this knowledge of the body and how to care for the body, but also the ways the body’s violent, and the ways violence has been inflicted on bodies. So could you talk about being a med student and now writing poetry and how these two things have converged?

N: I think what I learned about medicine and what I learned from all these science books is that they are also violent towards erasure of people. A lot of what science teaches us is that science occurs outside the body, or that science is this body of knowledge, but you don’t really have a person in it, if that makes sense. It’s not about seeing the humanity in people, really, because you’re trying to break them down into cells, you’re trying to break them down into theories and ideas, and so I think poetry was a great tool for me in medical school to remind me about humanity and reminding me that we have to see the person as a whole. I mean, the first day of med school you’re confronted with this dead corpse in front of you and you just kind of have to cut it open, right? Talk about a traumatic memory. But it’s also about then taking that person and then realizing that this is a body that has a lived history, and how can I as a writer bring that history to life, and how can I tell this person’s story in the way that it needs to be told and respected. I don’t know if that answered your question.

P: No, this is great. I’m letting it sink in. It’s got to be hard having that experience but it’s also kind of illuminating, too, I think. Seeing the person. And I guess in a book, you’ve got an anatomy of a book, but you’re trying to piece this out for yourself and you’re trying to see people.

Okay. Let’s segue, here. This middle section, again, I’m still, I think--

N: That’s your favorite part.

P: It’s one of my favorite parts. But I’ve also noticed a lot of other folks have picked up on it as well, particularly in that reading you did with… who was it in New Orleans?

N: Reyna. With Book Banter. Blue Cypress Books.

P: Yes. She [Reyna] I think noticed this too and picked up on this theme of motherhood, but I also noticed that even in this little section there’s a beginning, middle, and end, starting with “Reader I Married Him,” which is in the voice of your mother, and then we end with, I would say, “Bird Song for My Daughter.” So this transition from being a daughter to being a mother. It’s very interesting to me. In the mother section, do you find that there’s a difference between your interaction with your mother versus your interactions with your child as a mother? Do you feel like you can appreciate being a mom more now that you’ve had a kid?

N: I think that’s a good question, and I’m going to backtrack a little bit. Originally when I wrote this book, there were actually only two sections. There’s a mother section and a daughter section.

P: Oh wow.

N: I was envisioning them as talking to each other, back and forth, and so that’s why I kind of interwound the poems, a little bit, so it’s very interesting to me that you say that it’s concentrated in the middle, because my intention is to have it throughout the book, but that’s okay. You know what, poetry is in the eye of the beholder and what your intentions are kind of differs. I would say that becoming a mother has given me a lot more sympathy for my mom. My dad worked full time as a doctor and my mom basically moved to Ireland and then to the United States with me and my little sister. She didn’t really know English that well, so it was a big transition for her. She also really loved being a doctor herself, so she had to make a lot of professional sacrifices to raise us. I also did grow up kind of resenting her a little bit because I had that oldest daughter syndrome where I had to take care of my little sister for a long time while both she and my dad worked. So we have a very complicated relationship, and actually she’s commented on “Reader I Married Him” and she’s always saying, “This is inaccurate! Why did you put these lies in this book?”

P+N: [laughing]

N: She’s said that about a lot of these poems in this book. She’s like, “These are inaccurate but it’s sweet that you tried.”

P: Ooooh mygosh!

N: But I’d say becoming a mom myself has given me a lot more patience with comments like that and a lot more grace.

P: So when you envision the book, and you’re thinking about the mother/daughter sections, where did you draw this line, or has it become difficult to answer that question?

N: I think in the editing process it’s become a little bit difficult to answer that question. I feel like I tried to mesh in a couple of different poems into a couple of different works, so some of these poems are from a collection that I wrote in a poetry class that I took with Kai Davis that talked about this young Pakistani girl [Benaz] who was killed by her parents. So that’s where “Police Report by the Metropolitan Police Department,” comes in. So a couple of poems were based on her, a couple poems are based on my recollections as a young girl, and now looking forward as a mother and trying to intertwine all these things together. So it’s become a little more murky, the distinction.

P: Another question I want to ask is how do you feel God is situating itself in this book?

N: That’s a good question. I grew up pretty religious. By the time I was seven I had read the Koran twice in Arabic, so I was very into it, and I remember in sixth grade I would carry around a little copy of the Koran with me because it gave me a lot of hope in a time where it felt like the world was turning against Muslim people. After 9/11, after all the Islamaphobic attacks that had happened. My house was egged in my neighborhood, and so that was a really scary experience as a young child. But then as I grew older I also didn’t feel as accepted in the Islamic culture, especially as a queer person. So there’s always this discord happening where I feel like I loved God and I loved my community, but I didn’t always feel as supported by God or my community. So I’m working through that in this book in some ways.

P: I can definitely see how that’s happening. One of the other things I’m noticing in the beginning is the violence from God.

N: Mhm.
P: It almost is a global thing in this book. Violence in everything, as you’ve said.
N: Yeah.
P: And the creator of everything is God.
N: From the macro to the micro.
P: Right.
N: There’s violence at every level.
P: Which I found very interesting. I think there’s one poem where you say you can find God in yourself. Hold on. Let me see if I can find this poem.
N: Is it “God Lies In Between?”
P: I think it might be.
N: Yeah, so that poem is actually inspired by a Bollywood movie. It’s called Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and it has a very different story line. It’s about this young girl who marries this older man and then they start to dance in competitions together and they win all the competitions, but anyway: in that movie there’s a song that says, “What can I do? I see God in you,” “Tujh mein rab dikhta hai.” So that really made think about how we can locate God within other people, and then how we can locate God within ourselves, too.
P: I love that, and I think there’s again, this transition between just witnessing the violence to kind of… there’s something about becoming a mother in here that was transformative for you, obviously, but transformative for this book, which is why I see so much heat in it towards the end and claiming your stakes here, something about seeing God in yourself that I feel like there’s such a hopeful ending.
N: Well, you know, God created life and mothers create life, so like?
P: Yes, that’s so true.
N: There’s a parallel there.
P: So I want to land here: do you feel like there’s some sort of closure in the book, or do you feel like this book is trying to not give closure, or do you feel like this book is trying to give an offering of one way to work through things, even though it’s still an on-going process?
N: I would say that while it’s still and on-going process, I wanted the reader to walk away with some sort of release, which is why I chose “Too Close to the Sun We Bleed” as the end because the script that’s on the right hand side “There’s no God but this God,” that’s actually from Arabic and it says la 'ilaha 'illa -llah u, and then “to them you will return” is what you say when someone passes in the Muslim community, and so in a way I wanted this book to be an emotional release, and now you’re passing and you’re moving forward, because you’ve been able to witness the violence, but you’ve also been able to reclaim your power within that structure, if that makes sense.
P: I definitely think that comes through at the end. Because in getting to the end, honestly, there’s some sweet poems in here.
N: Yeah!
P: I remember you reading “Dinner for Four” in Fahima’s class.
N: That’s inspired by this garden!
P: And you know, I loved it.
N: Oh, this is a dark poem, actually. I talked about it at UnderPass. This poem is about war babies and how they used to bury… so during the Bangladesh Independence war there were over 400,000 women who were raped by the Pakistani army and by different guerilla armies, and a lot of those women gave birth, right? But a lot of them were very ashamed and felt isolated from their community and they ended up burying the babies underground.
P: Oh man.
N: So this poem is a little bit about what grows after that violence. What grows from the ground after you bury a child in it.
P: Yeah.
N: So, it’s not so much of a sweet poem.
P+N: [laughing]
P: I do remember it, just those lines “Lover I grew it. Here and here and here. Do you want to see?”
N: Yeah.
P: So even though you’re talking about growing food growing over war babies, I think that, in some way, that is what this book is doing. You’ve got this violence that happened, that is cataloged in the body, which we see in “Studies in Bangla,” and then coming here and growing out of it… there’s a lot of gardening and eating in this last section, too…
N: There’s a lot of consumption.
P: Yeah, and I think that that’s always a sign that you’re healthy, is that you’re eating again.
N: That’s true. That’s a good way to look at it, Parker.
P: And while what’s come in the past is awful and terrible and we are still working through those structures in a lot of ways, I think that this book is showing a way to work with that and grow from it.
N: Yeah, and I think that’s also what motherhood teaches you, that a lot of the days are long and it’s very difficult, you know, and there’s a lot of biting and pulling and yelling and spitting, and just a lot happening, but you have to also find the tender moments. You have to recognize the moments that your child first looks at you, the moment that they first laugh, the moment that they put their shoes on for the first time on the right feet. You have to let those moments carry you forward, because otherwise you sink into nihilism and despair, and yeah, I want to try to avoid that.
P: So what are you currently working on now that this is done? I know a thesis coming up. What’s happening with you now?
N: Well the thesis, basically. My thesis focuses on women incarcerated in Louisiana between 1835 and 1913, and that specific time period because they were held in Baton Rouge, and Louisiana was one of the only states that incarcerated women at that time. They also incarcerated enslaved women, so not only were you enslaved, but you were also then imprisoned. So I found out a lot of really fascinating things doing a history project with Operation Restore, which is a nonprofit based out of New Orleans that works with women who are incarcerated in Louisiana. They had a graduate school class and they were doing an archive into the history of the prisons, but because they can’t physically leave the prison, I acted as an intermediary for them and gathered the archives and put them together in this database. So a lot of the collection talks about the human toll that it takes to do such research, that, in a way, uncovering these stories means that you’re also bearing witness to the violence that these women faced, and it impacts you as a person, too.
P: Hmm. That’s very interesting.
N: I could talk a little bit more about it.
P: Yeah, definitely.
N: So right now it’s broken into three sections: we have poetry, we have a fiction story, and then we have the nonfiction pieces, and I’m trying to figure out how to weave them together in a way that makes sense.
P: So it’s a multi genre project. And I know you’re working with Josh Wheeler, and I’m sure he’s been giving great tips on how to pull it all together.
N: Yeah! Josh has a multi genre… well, actually, I think his book is a creative nonfiction collection on the atomic bomb and New Mexico, and so he’s had a lot of really good insight. He just has a lot of good knowledge in general.
P: Yeah. I’m taking a class with him right now and it’s been some of the best feedback I think I’ve gotten.
N: Yeah, that’s why I wanted him as my thesis advisor. Because he gives very honest feedback. But also constructive.
P: Well, Nuha, I really appreciate you taking the time to interview and do this. I know we’ve been talking about it for a while. Is there anything you’d like to say, or anything that we haven’t talked about in God Mornings, Tiger Nights?
N: Umm… no. I think I’d like to say that I appreciate having you as a friend and having you take such a close look at my work and finding these themes that maybe even I wasn’t fully conscious of, and for leading such a thoughtful discussion on the book. I appreciate it.
P: Nuha, I appreciate you coming out. I appreciate everything--
N: Everything we grew together.
P: Everything we grew together! All the parties at your place. I hope your family is doing wonderful, and thank you so much for a great interview.
N: Thank you, Parker.
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For the Asymmetrical Center of My Universe by Nuha Fariha

Standing in the shower, I peer over its expanse,
Mama calls it my potla, pinches it affectionately
a shameful third child, I cover with fabrications
inside the ill fitting salwar, my potla, a neon target,
a repository for chittering aunties’ jabs,
for hapless uncles’ tearful confessionals,
for golden ladoos I inevitably devour.
Later I cradle my potla with both hands,
trace fading purple scars
criss cross borderlines
my stubborn potla refuses to take form
as if to say
fuck your standards
fuck your borders
we are here we are here we are here
we are here we are here we are here we are here
we are here we are here.

Nuha Fariha (she/her) is a first generation queer Bangladeshi American writer.  She is currently earning her Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. Her work has been published in MAGMA, Thin Air, Stellium Literary, Roadrunner and elsewhere. She is a 2023 Anaphora Arts Fellow, a 2023 Key West Writers Workshop Fellow, and a 2022 Juniper Summer Institute Workshop Fellow.  Her first book, God Mornings Tiger Nights, was published in August 2023 with GameOverBooks. You can learn more about Nuha at nuhawrites.com.

Parker Logan (he/him) is a bisexual writer originally from Orlando, Florida. He currently live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, West Trade Review, and others. He is the current editor of NDR and the former director of the Delta Mouth Literary Festival. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart, an AWP intro award, and he is the recipient of the 2023 Yellowwood Poetry Prize from the Yalobusha Review.