Desire/Halves
The 2023 winner of the Nine Syllables Press chapbook contest is Desire/Halves by Jai Hamid Bashir. Available for pre-orders now! (This book will ship in early October.)
This debut poetry collection from Jai Hamid Bashir is a tantalizing study of desire for care and nourishment. Bashir navigates between English, Urdu, and Spanish, examining the interplay of these languages and the experience of being Pakistani-American. Bashir’s melancholy descriptions of rabbits and dogs, along with her visceral fruit imagery, connect the tender, human experience with that of the nonhuman. Alluring, mesmerizing, and evocative—this debut book of poems invites the reader to examine the embodiment of incompleteness.
Leila Chatti describes Desire/Halves as “a lush read of infinite tenderness. I marvel at Bashir’s dexterous use of language and sensuous, striking imagery—the “silverhurry” of moon, “اااااا blades of grass.” I could look forever through Bashir’s eyes if it meant seeing the world like this. A masterful, vivid debut—here is a voice to pay attention to.”
Jai Hamid Bashir is a South Asian artist whose work has been featured in publications such as POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Arkansas International, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and Image Journal. A graduate of the University of Utah and Columbia University, she lives and writes in the American West with her partner.
The 2023 winner of the Nine Syllables Press chapbook contest is Desire/Halves by Jai Hamid Bashir. Available for pre-orders now! (This book will ship in early October.)
This debut poetry collection from Jai Hamid Bashir is a tantalizing study of desire for care and nourishment. Bashir navigates between English, Urdu, and Spanish, examining the interplay of these languages and the experience of being Pakistani-American. Bashir’s melancholy descriptions of rabbits and dogs, along with her visceral fruit imagery, connect the tender, human experience with that of the nonhuman. Alluring, mesmerizing, and evocative—this debut book of poems invites the reader to examine the embodiment of incompleteness.
Leila Chatti describes Desire/Halves as “a lush read of infinite tenderness. I marvel at Bashir’s dexterous use of language and sensuous, striking imagery—the “silverhurry” of moon, “اااااا blades of grass.” I could look forever through Bashir’s eyes if it meant seeing the world like this. A masterful, vivid debut—here is a voice to pay attention to.”
Jai Hamid Bashir is a South Asian artist whose work has been featured in publications such as POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Arkansas International, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and Image Journal. A graduate of the University of Utah and Columbia University, she lives and writes in the American West with her partner.
The 2023 winner of the Nine Syllables Press chapbook contest is Desire/Halves by Jai Hamid Bashir. Available for pre-orders now! (This book will ship in early October.)
This debut poetry collection from Jai Hamid Bashir is a tantalizing study of desire for care and nourishment. Bashir navigates between English, Urdu, and Spanish, examining the interplay of these languages and the experience of being Pakistani-American. Bashir’s melancholy descriptions of rabbits and dogs, along with her visceral fruit imagery, connect the tender, human experience with that of the nonhuman. Alluring, mesmerizing, and evocative—this debut book of poems invites the reader to examine the embodiment of incompleteness.
Leila Chatti describes Desire/Halves as “a lush read of infinite tenderness. I marvel at Bashir’s dexterous use of language and sensuous, striking imagery—the “silverhurry” of moon, “اااااا blades of grass.” I could look forever through Bashir’s eyes if it meant seeing the world like this. A masterful, vivid debut—here is a voice to pay attention to.”
Jai Hamid Bashir is a South Asian artist whose work has been featured in publications such as POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, The Arkansas International, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and Image Journal. A graduate of the University of Utah and Columbia University, she lives and writes in the American West with her partner.