From publishing her debut poetry collection House to House: بيت لبيت to taking the stage at this year’s Taobuk Festival (Taormina International Book Festival), Emirati poet and artist Shamma Al Bastaki continues to carve out a space in contemporary literature for herself. Having begun writing at the tender age of seven, she has since grown into a thought-provoking literary voice whose work resonates beyond borders. In conversation with MOJEH, Shamma reflects on her creative journey, her sources of inspiration and the rituals behind her writing process.
MOJEH: You’ve been writing poetry since you were just seven years old. Did you always know that poetry would become your primary vehicle for exploring the world?
Shamma Al Bastaki: I always knew that I loved words and playing with them. I was obsessed with rhyming and spelling games as a kid. At some point in my adolescence, I didn’t have a choice – writing made me its vehicle. I was very shy growing up, so writing became my primary mode of communicating and connecting, if not with people, with the ether.
Eventually it became a part of me, and before I knew it it saturated all my lenses of encounter. It’s a blessing I don’t take for granted; to encounter the world with sensitivity and texture, to see the thickness in ordinary moments.
What is a book that changed your perspective and sticks with you to date?
There are so many. One of them has to be Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein, which changed everything for me about how to use words like play dough. Understanding (and not understanding) her work was the moment where I really started to make sense of the impulse in my early adulthood to transition from more narrative, emotionally saturated poetry towards poetry that is skeptical of narrative depth as a prerequisite to making meaningful work. Why does a poem have to ‘mean’ anything to be meaningful? Reading Gertrude made me more interested in the question of what language can do and be.
From studying literature and sociology to your master’s from Harvard, how do you feel your background as a researcher and academic shapes your lens as a poet?
The processes are inextricably linked for me. I don’t see a separation between research and poetry, necessarily. Both are processes of inquiry. Poetry functions as a vehicle of noticing, which is also what research is all about. I’ve always believed there is something poetry can access of the truth of this world (an imperceptible texture, a decibel..) that other modes of knowledge-making never could. That said, I’ve also found the inverse to be true.
The more ‘academic’ subjects I’ve engaged with over the years have been tremendously generative to my creative output. And this extends beyond my own fields. I can’t do maths to save my life, but some of my favourite conversations are with engineers, architects and scientists. I want to know all about their machines and experiments, even when they perplex me.
Shakespeare said it best – as he often does – in Hamlet: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
House to House: بيت لبيت explores the linguistic duality of the Arabic word Beit — meaning both “house” and “a line of poetry.” How did that concept guide you as you mapped the memory and heritage of Dubai Creek?
The title came to me in medias res, sort of in the middle of making the book. I was moving from house to house, collecting stories about memories of houses, and jumping between lines of poetry (houses). I liked that this double entendre gets lost in translation; that ‘beit’ could carry both meanings at once. It served as a meaningful frame for much of what the book questions: what gets lost in translation and what other forms of meaning emerge in the process? How can language function as a container for a story, perhaps a house? The form I employed attempts to create little window structures of stanzas, a glimpse into the houses (in all senses of the word). There are text-image poems as well, which visually map the urban qualities of Dubai’s historic creek neighbourhoods, such as the ‘سكيك ‘series of sikka networks that connected the houses and their inhabitants.
You recently returned from the Taobuk Festival in Sicily, where you opened Anish Kapoor’s exhibition with a poetry reading. What was the energy of that moment like, and how did it feel to see your words resonate alongside his art?
The energy was electric, almost red. We were at the Palazzo Corvaja in Taormina, backdropped by Anish’s gorgeous paintings. I shared a line from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, where Geryon, a red-winged monster, says: “I will never know how you see red, and you will never know how I see it.”
I then read an excerpt from my collection Al-Majaz: A Crossing, leading to a dialogue about chiastic processes of making.
What does your ideal writing environment look like? Do you require total quiet, or do you draw energy from a more bustling space?
It depends on what I’m writing. I don’t have a singular answer because most of the time, if I’m not working towards a specific project or deadline, the language takes me by surprise. Wherever I am, be it in a café, in a supermarket or in transit, I will do my best to put the trail of words in my mind onto the nearest available writing surface. Discarded receipts and napkins have been my savior. Now that I think about it, I appreciate a bit of noise. I find nothing more distracting than total quiet.
Tell us the best piece of creative advice you’ve ever received?
I have a few. They are:
“Bird by bird.”
“Speak (/write) from your stomach.”
“Poetry is easy. Write easy.”
Read House to House: بيت لبيت here
