The latest release from author and poet Solmaz Sharif, Customs, has just dropped. It comes highly anticipated after her first book Look, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. Where Look reflected upon the effects of war on language and culture, Customs examines the liminality of the arrivals terminal.
Sharif’s work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, the New York Times and other publications. She has attained numerous accolades and fellowships for her work. These include the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University.
Solmaz Sharif’s writing career
Sharif’s work first found recognition with the “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize in 2011. She then received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2013. Sharif has received other fellowships from Stanford University, the Fine Arts Work Center and the Poetry Foundation. The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference have awarded her a scholarship, and she has also won the Bernice Holmes National Poetry Prize.
In 2016, Sharif published her debut book of poems Look. The book examines the long-term effects of war on people, language and culture. Its poems include terms from the US Department of Defense dictionary, striving to uncover the truth behind its language.
For her poems, Sharif won the 2017 American Book Award. She also became a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2017 PEN Open Book Award. Look was included as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of 2016 and Washington Post’s Best Poetry Collection of 2016.
Sharif currently works as an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University. There she inaugurated a Poetry for the People Program.
Solmaz Sharif draws on displaced history
Sharif’s Iranian parents were studying in the US in the late 1970s when the revolution in Iran happened. They went back to Iran then, only to leave in 1983 for the US again. Sharif was born en route in Istanbul.
The family moved to Texas for her father to finish his studies, and then to Alabama for her mother to do the same. They finally settled in Los Angeles, when Sharif was 11 years old. With a large Iranian population there, Sharif felt alienated from a community in middle school that she considered overly upper-class. “No matter where I went, I was outside of whatever community I found myself in, so that even when I arrived in a place where there was a lot of “me,” I was totally outside again,” she says
Sharif’s moment of identification and belonging came when she attended an Iranian feminist conference convened by Angela Davis. Interested in allyship between communities, Sharif heard the term “women of color” used by Davis and it resonated deeply: “It was the first time I’d heard the term, and I thought, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to name. Whatever struggle is deemed optional or needs to be postponed, that’s my community,” she says.
“Customs” by Solmaz Sharif
Sharif’s new book of poems Customs will be published by Graywolf Press. The book examines the reality of the nowhere, liminal space in the US arrivals terminal. For example, it details the endless checkpoints, officers, searches and questionings that have come to define the experience of arriving in America. Its poems therefore trace the ways in which the American state accustoms its arrivals into the customs of the nation and the English Language.
Whilst the book critiques the social conventions that maintain structures -and even poetry itself- Sharif’s words ultimately strive towards freedom. Publisher’s Weekly commends the book in a starred review: “Sharif’s commanding voice reverberates throughout this complex and confident collection.”
Order the book here.
