KARAN

Tara, thank you for these deeply moving and thought-provoking poems. I love your work for exploring deeply complex themes of cultural identity, family history, and faith. I’m particularly struck by how you blend personal experience with broader cultural and historical contexts. In “From Baghdad and Kraków—Fact, Fiction, Query, Plea,” you write, “I realize then there are no photographs / of my Muslim grandma.” This line beautifully sets up the exploration of memory and identity that follows. Let’s begin with the process question. How do you approach writing a poem? Do you start with an image, a line, or an idea? Do you have a writing routine? And most importantly, why do you write poetry?

TARA

First, thank you so much, Karan, for honoring my poetry in this way. I’m so grateful. Also, to Shannan and you for creating ONLY POEMS—truly a new paradigm.

As for my approach to writing poems, I don’t really have a set process. The idea of a poem might appear, sudden and surprising, or distill within me for years. The words on the page as image/ idea/line /whatever, come when they do.

On the line you quote here about my Muslim grandma, (thank you for leading with her), I’ve asked a lifetime of asks for a photo of this grandmother, but the words didn’t find the page for decades.  

I do spend a lot of time revising my poems—experimenting with form and language and ideas, draft after draft, and that’s fun for me. As Wallace Stevens said in “The Necessary Angel”: The startling content is available to everyone, but it is technique that keeps us young.

I particularly love reading poems, and there’s so many I could read a hundred times over, in fact, I do. I hope one day to write such poems.

KARAN

Your poems often touch on themes of cultural heritage, particularly your Muslim and Jewish roots. For instance, in “Ghazal of Doubt,” you write, “You cannot have true faith without true doubt— / this I know from my gram and her Kraków ghetto of doubt.” How do you navigate the intersection of these two cultural and religious traditions in your poetry that are at such odds with each other, especially given the Israel-Palestine conflict? Do you find that poetry provides a unique space for exploring these complex identities?

TARA

I’m often asked questions related to my heritage, my unique immersion in these two religions since childhood. 

The year my devout-Muslim father made his pilgrimage to Mecca, my Jewish mother, daughter of immigrants from Poland, became a bat mitzvah. 

Each day, I watched my father kneel on his prayer rug, open his Quran and pray to Allah. 

At the same time, a quick bike-ride away, my maternal grandfather would wrap his arm in tefillin, drape his tallis over his shoulders, open his Torah and pray to God. 

In my family, that was the way — Muslim and Jewish, peacefully, both.    

I really don’t see Muslim and Jewish religious traditions at odds with each other. They share a core belief in a higher power, whether you call that higher power Allah or God. And the more I read about the teachings of the Quran and the Torah, the more I see the similarities.   

On the current Israel-Palestine conflict, the acts of extreme violence in the name of religion — 

they are unfathomable to me, unconscionable to me. But it’s something I’m not ready to talk about yet, write about yet, not the present condition.

I do, though, write towards a future, many of my poems do. And while they concern themselves with ancestry, they also straddle religious lines and offer a common humanity. 

I pray for this, and for one where we not only include each other but open our hearts.  

KARAN

I love your ghazals, Tara, especially how they mirror each other and perform a kind of tango. “Ghazal of Doubt” and “Ghazal of Faith” both employ the traditional form in ways that are melodic, entertaining, and be. How do you approach working with traditional forms? Do you find that the constraints of form provide a useful structure for addressing difficult subjects?

TARA

I love your ghazals, too, Karan — they are brilliant. I learn much from them.

Regarding “Ghazal of Doubt,” I wrote this poem after experiencing Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Spring 2023—a myriad devastating images of The Holocaust.

My Jewish grandmother’s entire family of origin was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camps. Gram could barely ever talk about these atrocities, and she endured shock treatments because of them.

Perhaps it was the paradox of the ghazal form—its constraints, a container of sorts, that offered me entry into writing this poem with subject matter so big, so difficult, so personal.

KARAN

In “Grandmother, Imagined—,” you create a portrait of a grandmother you never knew through a series of sensory images. You write, “with her voice a smooth, open door, / music from other rooms, sometimes her voice in cursive, / mostly her voice of listening.” I invite you to talk to us about your grandmother. How, when, why did you begin exploring her? Grandmothers are dear to poetry and half my poems I’ve ever written are about my grandmother and it’s true across the board. What is it about grandmothers that fascinates us so much?

TARA

At the ONLY POEMS reading yesterday, I had the good fortune to hear Emily Jungmin Yoon share her stunning poem about her grandmother, “All My Friends Who Loved Trees are Dead.”  And Karan, one of your poems, (please accept the love), is among my favorite poems of all time, also about your grandmother, “Ghazal for Dida.” I, too, write a lot about my two grandmothers. The one I grew up with, Gram, I love more than anyone I have ever known. 

I never met my Iraqi grandmother, Mesalik, but I’ve searched for her most of my life, for clues into her identity. Though my findings were few and zero photographs, I’ve felt her with me, a mysterious presence, an aching part of me.

Perhaps part of my fascination with my paternal grandma is because I am her namesake, or that my father weeps every time she’s mentioned or when I ask him yet another question about her. Clearly, she was his salvation, but she died in Baghdad in her thirties, typhoid, leaving my father behind, just a boy and his five siblings.        

This past year, perhaps through a divine gift, or the disciplined practice of reading and writing poetry, or both—many imaginative details of this grandmother came rushing at me, and I felt their truth. I could see her then, feel her, know her — an immeasurable comfort for me, though some of the visions were very sad or hard ones.

KARAN

Your poem “Flying an Ancient Rug from Tangier” weaves together religious practices, familial memories, and fantastical imagery. You write, “Five times through the hours our foreheads touch ground, buzz / such futz from our brains.” Let’s talk about religion, Tara. We’ve never done that here (so far) but I feel there’s something intrinsically common in our religious impulse and our impulse to write (especially poetry). Would you explore that here? Are you religious? How do we forgive, or get past, the hatred and violence that goes in the name of religion?

TARA

Karan, I identify as both Jewish and Muslim — how could I not, given my heritage and upbringing? 

I do, though, also characterize myself as deeply spiritual and believe we are all God’s or Allah’s or Jehovah’s or . . . ? children. Again, there are many more similarities than differences among the major religions and I believe they all come from a place of love. 

On your question, “How do we forgive, or get past, the hatred and violence that goes in the name of religion?” A poignant question, of course, I don’t know the answer.

Camus once said, “the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” 

Perhaps then, one of the tasks of the poet is to articulate/illuminate the peace and forgiveness for which we are capable.             

KARAN

Tara, being the faithful ONLY POEMS reader that you are, you’ve probably thought about this question already: There’s a school of poetry that believes a poem or a poet can categorize their work in one of these four ways: poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work within this framework, if at all? And do you see your poetry evolving in a different direction?

TARA

It’s a curious question, Karan. For me the answer is poetry of the soul, my work is my soul — 

a collection of experiences, and questions, observations. Some decades old, and perhaps beyond into other lifetimes even. Who’s to say? 

My mind is just the medium, the conduit that allows me to share through words. 

After all, in the end, when the body, the mind, even the heart all wax ephemeral, what is left? Isn’t it the soul that endures? I hope it’s the soul. 

KARAN

You mention that you call an island in the Salish Sea home. Does your physical environment influence your poetics? Do you find that the natural world of the Pacific Northwest informs your imagery or themes?

TARA

I live on San Juan Island, an island off the coast of Washington State. And although it’s in the U.S., we look across the Haro Straits to the contours and lights of Canada, six miles away.

We’re pretty isolated here, my husband Paul and I, and our 15-year-old beloved dog Hector, whom we adopted after his early years as a street dog in Mexico.

An eagle family lives on our property (maybe better said, we live on theirs). Deer and fox families wander, and orcas and the occasional humpback pass through the kelp beds 30 yards from our back door. The sunsets are almost ineffable. 

I don’t write much poetry that’s directly related to the Pacific Northwest, but I do gravitate toward the sanctity and immense beauty of this natural world. My humility and gratitude abound here. I can't imagine a better place for poets and their poetry.

KARAN

Congratulations on winning the 2024 James Hearst Poetry Prize — we’re proud to reprint “Anticipatory Grief as Phases of Moons”! Also, many congratulations on being the Honorable Mention for the ONLY POEMS annual prize. What is some of the best writing or writing-adjacent advice you’ve received, whether during your formal education or through your recent experiences as a poet?

TARA

Thank you again, Karan, and ONLY POEMS for this honor which I can hardly believe. Also, thank you to the editors at North American Review and contest judge Dianne Suess. I am so humbled. 

The best writing advice I’ve received—read, read, read poetry, then read some more. 

KARAN

Recently, we decided to ask our poets for a poetry prompt at the end. Would you provide a prompt for our readers, to help kickstart a poem?

TARA

Karan, I feared this question was coming! I admit, anything about the word “prompt” gives me the willies.

But poetry exercises work for me, especially those that push at my aesthetic limits. 

I recommend two books on poetics used by our local poetry group’s devoted and longstanding teacher, Gary Thompson. Lakes and more lakes of gratitude to you, Gary — holds up our feet, (Robert Bly).

-- “A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry” by Gregory Orr

-- “Writing Poetry” (second edition) by Barbara Drake

KARAN

We’d also love for you to recommend a piece of art (anything other than a poem) — perhaps a song, a film, or a visual artwork — that you find particularly inspiring or that you think everyone should experience.

TARA

I’ve always been deeply moved by profound brilliance:

Adele - Set Fire To The Rain (Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

and profound kindness:

“Derek”  TV Series, 2012-2014   https://www.netflix.com/title/70258489