Diaspora Dialogues

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Emerging Author of the Month: Sarena Parmar

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Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in Kelowna, BC. I had taken a creative writing class in high school, but never thought much of it. I went on to pursue my career as an actor. I studied collective creation with One Yellow Rabbit in Calgary and commedia dell’arte in Italy. But my main learning happened at the National Theatre School, where I studied acting for three years. In my second year, we had to create a ten-minute solo-show. And I immediately thought, oh shit! I have nothing to write about—nothing I wanted to say. But eventually, I created a piece called Inheritance. And after that I realized maybe I do have something to say.

My trajectory as a playwright has been a shy, slow growing emergence. Always apologizing for being an actor first and a playwright second. But slowly people showed interest in my work, which allowed me to build skills and confidence. Inheritance was accepted into the Diaspora Dialogues mentorship program, and grew into a one-act, three woman play. I created a one-woman show, Through the Lens, which was invited to be a part of the Summerworks Youth Reading Series. But it has only been in the last two years that I have begun to identify myself as an actor AND playwright. I was part of the Cahoot’s Playwriting Unit last year, which was a huge turning point for me mentally. Currently, I am working on a re-imagining of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, based on my personal experience of growing up as an orchardist. Set in the Okanagan during the Trudeau Era, it follows a Punjabi-Sikh family fighting to save their orchard from foreclosure. The play examines the minority experience in rural Canada and the search for a better life, at a time when multiculturalism was born and anything was possible.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

This is the first few pages of a piece called The Park. The play began as a short writing exercise, but I quickly realized, there was something bigger I wanted to explore with these characters.

The play examines what happens when two unlikely strangers meet. Both characters want to connect so badly with another human being, they are blind to the consequences. The Park looks at the dangerous lengths people will go to in order to survive.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

When I realized there were stories I wanted to tell, needed to tell. And that no one else could tell them; because no one has had my experiences, history, or emotional makeup. I believe we all have that ability and uniqueness in us.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

I don’t know if any one writer has had THE major impact on me. Because I work in theatre and television as an actor, I am constantly surrounded by writers, scripts and stories. I think I took for granted what I’ve learned about playwriting or who I have been influenced by. But it is the everyday events that have the biggest impact on me. I see a moment happen in real life, and it rings true to something so much bigger. I ask myself: why does this move me? And how can I create this feeling in my plays?

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

A writer that can show the ugliness and beauty of the human condition. We, as human beings, are so complex. It is endlessly fascinating to me.

How and when do you find time to write?

It is definitely hard to find time to write. I’m not the type of person who can schedule only an hour to work and actually get something on the page. It takes me a while to get settled and filter out distractions. So I’ve started creating self-imposed writing retreats. I’ll book off five days and do nothing but write, sleep and eat. It allows me to clear my mind and immerse myself in the play.

Big

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I like elephants. Or I should say I love elephants.
I like that they chew their food slowly the way my little brother does.
I like the way they lumber, not lope.
I like the simplicity of their thick bodies.
I like how each foot has the girth of a tree.
I like how their ears seem almost razorsharp at the edges.
I like that their bodies can produce a substance as rare as ivory.
I like that they take revenge against poachers and murderers.
I like the strength hidden under the folds of skin like steel springs.
I like the harsh reality of how dangerous they really are.

I regret being born in this thin, useless body.
I regret these legs which may as well have been toothpicks.
I regret this big nose which was never big or long enough.
I regret this disproportionate brain which knew too much empathy.
I regret not being born an elephant
or I could have wrapped my trunk tightly around you
and taken you away from this place of violence and hate.
I could have moved one thick leg after the other
through the garbage and the stab wounds and the broken bones.

But you are here with your arms wrapped around me.
You are here with your back absorbing the blows.
You are here dying to take revenge.
Maybe you are an elephant and
That is why I love you.

Emerging Author of the Month: Irfan Ali

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m a Pakistani-Canadian(-ish) Muslim(-ish) guy(-ish) human who has had the pleasure of being on this Earth for 26 years thus far. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to occupy many different roles in both my personal and professional lives in a handful of different places around the world. Beyond this perpetual need for change, the only other constants in my life have been confusion about my identity (hence the—ish’s above) and an unflinching desire to observe and document the world around me, and especially the people who populate it. It was the latter that ultimately led me to write. While I have spent most of my life writing in various forms, it’s only been within the last two years that I actually built up the confidence to start taking my craft seriously and share it with others.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

The piece, Big, started out as a celebration of elephants, my favourite animal. As it grew, it organically became a vehicle for me to explore the inherent beauty of ‘bigness’ (that is so often excluded from social norms of beauty), the power of love expressed through violence, and the subversion of traditional masculinity. Like a lot of my work, it also gave me an opportunity to explore some very personal issues, though I tried to do it in a way that did not alienate anyone. While I’m not sure I was entirely successful in its execution, I really enjoyed the process of creating and editing this piece. At the time I wrote Big, I was reading Geoffrey Brown’s Notice, so stylistically it is definitely inspired by the deliberate repetition of Brown’s poetry.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

At a very young age. My first serious writing project began at age ten with ‘adventures’—Dungeons and Dragons-like quests without all of the complex math and character sheets of the real game. I would spend hours writing these adventures before allowing my brothers to play the game. Unfortunately, while I was growing up, I was unable to see myself as a writer because of a combination of low self-confidence, having no one in my family who had gone down that path, and a lack of representation both in authors and characters within the majority of the literature I was exposed to throughout my life. I owe a lot to the Toronto Street Writers, a local youth writing group, for helping me overcome a lot of these issues.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

There are a lot of authors that have really influenced my writing including Nizar Qabbani, Leonard Cohen, Anne Wilkinson, Robert Priest, and Pablo Neruda. The two most important poems in my life have been Frank O’Hara’s Having a Coke with You and Faiz Ahmed Faiz’ Bol. The former really opened my eyes to the power of the stream of consciousness and free verse and the beauty of everyday observation, while the latter to me represents a perfect fusion of activism, sexuality, and art through words. I make a habit of reading both of these poems when I feel discouraged to remind myself of why I started writing poetry.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

I aspire to be the kind of writer that causes pause when someone is asked to describe my writing [in the future], and finally responds, “Well, I guess his writing is something like a cross between [WRITER A]’s and [WRITER B]’s, but not really.” Also, although I’m not at this level of skill or knowledge yet, I would love my writing to act as a form of social and political activism without being either too diluted or too heavy-handed, which in my mind is what has really set some of the most important artistic works in history apart from their contemporaries and has allowed them to affect lasting social change. Both of these are extremely lofty goals, but a guy can dream can’t he?

How and when do you find time to write?

Wherever and whenever I can. I currently work two jobs and also spend a lot of time DJ-ing so I am generally always short on time. To try to help this, I started using an agenda this year to plan out my days and try to work in some writing time whenever I can. In practice though, the only writing time I get is at night so I often sacrifice sleep to write. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), writing is enough of a compulsion that I have to do it even if it means only sleeping for three hours. Thankfully, even when I’m disillusioned or too busy to write, I’m surrounded by a group of really amazing fellow writers, friends, and family who support and challenge me to come back to it.

Emerging Author of the Month: Aisha Sasha John

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Tell us about yourself.

I’m a poet and a dancer. Both my writing and my dance practices are spiritual practices. As a dancer, my work has recently been exclusively improvised, both without accompaniment and with improvising musicians. I consider my dance a prayer, a sort of exaltation through movement. My first poetry collection, The Shining Material, was published last year by BookThug. In it, I consider what grace is through the use of the self-portrait. The prosody of that book is intended to be a feast and is also trance-inducing. For me, that which induces trance or some sort of quiet space is a feast. Currently, I’m working on a manuscript calledThe Book of You. I’m not entirely sure what it’s about yet (or else I wouldn’t be writing it) but it might be a portrait via a series of letters. I know that in this work I will be asking about what honesty is, and I’m wondering if it might have something to do with desire and one’s comfort with/acknowledgement of various desires. There is a continuing investigation of grace in The Book of You too. Recently, a selection of it was published as a chapbook called Gimme yr little quiet.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

This is a poem I wrote while reading some Sappho.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I don’t know if I’ve ever “realized I had a passion for writing” much as I realized I had a passion for reading. And that was very early. I think maybe when I first learned to read—and I remember the exact moment—was probably the definitive point. Understanding that the groups of letters on the page corresponded to the words my mother was saying, and thus cumulatively to the meaning of the sentence, of the story, was astounding to me. It still is. It was so good, this reading business, that I wanted to be a part of it too. I wanted to do for others what had been done for me as a reader. And so I did. At this point, I need to write. I can’t not write. But that is because I made it a part of my living. I made it like that by doing it, writing regularly when I wanted to and also when I didn’t want to. The passion, then, is a product of a love for reading and a little bit of discipline.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

This is too big of a question to answer precisely. So I will talk about the first poetry that made me not just want to write but to be a poet specifically—that is the poetry of Mr. Amiri Baraka. That decision was, and is, continually reinforced by the work of great and even good poets, but it was with Baraka that I got that first giddy giddy giddy feeling that manifested itself as ambition. Right now I am having that feeling with response to the work of Edmond Jabès, Aimé Césaire, and Jack Spicer.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

I aspire to be the kind of writer who goes and does what she needs to do.

How and when do you find time to write?

I don’t find time to write; I make time to write.

Emerging Author of the Month: Marni Van Dyk

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Tell us about yourself.

I started to write, like most of us, when I was a hormonal teenager, and I still always smile when I find those tortured typewriter-written poems on scraps in the bottom of drawers. Great, awful stuff. It wasn’t until I was in university that the very influential professor and talented writer Randall Maggs shone a bit of a light on me and challenged me to push myself to write more, and also, to not take myself too seriously. I listened to him and did both things which I think are equally as important. After graduating, I co-founded the all-female sketch comedy group She Said What with my closest and funniest friends. The project has gone on to do quite well, I’m happy to report that it was nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award among other successes. Creating SSW was a critical point, because we were creating work for ourselves at a time when no one was knocking on our doors offering us any. We became much stronger writers by going through the sometimes arduous process of creating countless stage shows together. You knew right away in that arena if you’ve written something good or not. While writing sketch comedy, I also have been working with an educational institution that takes students overseas to study on location—think studying Roman Gladiators at the Colosseum or the French Revolution at Versailles. I’ve traveled extensively, lectured, performed and written a lot of academic content and held workshops aimed at getting students engaged and excited about the world around them. Most recently, I’ve also been writing for, and playing the role of the “comedic” co-host of a car show airing in the U.S. and the U.K. where I get to ride absurdly fabulous cars and then make fun of them. It’s a tough gig. Also, I’m currently working on my first collection of short stories. The first story from the collection “The Red Mouths” is set to be published in subTerrain magazine.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

Sisters Always is a character driven piece that takes a sort of satirical/comical look at how small wants or longings can transform into strange obsessions. In the era of shows like Hoarders and My Strange Addiction, I think we’ve come to understand that really anything is possible and we all have a bit of strangeness in us in some way or another. In a way, I hope, this story touches on that point just a bit. The narrator is consumed with the idea of having a sister, so much so, that it colours her approach to having any sort of relationship with other women. It’s definitely a hyperbole meant to be funny or heaven forbid, silly, and I think it reflects that weird obsessive side we all have but would rather not share publicly. Whether it’s cutting your cuticles, collecting fridge magnets or compulsively applying hand sanitizer, we’re all a bit odd.

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I don’t know if I ever realized I had a passion for writing as much as a passion for story-telling. I grew up in theatre and dance and the idea of communicating ideas and connecting with others’ experiences through stories, both with and without words, has always been prominent for me. Writing my own stories, whether for stage or the page, was a natural evolution of telling others’ stories through performance.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

Ann-Marie McDonald’s Fall on your Knees. The book is brilliant, no doubt, but for me it was the first time I had read a story where there were so many female characters that were so fascinating, complicated and fully realized in a way that made me see the possibilities in writing for myself. All of the books I read growing up, particularly in school, were about men and boys coming-of-age told through the eyes of men. Reading Fall on your Knees was a revelation for me. Junot Diaz also had a huge impact on me in terms of finding character voice and putting forth the idea to share the kinds of stories we aren’t, but should be telling. I’m also a huge fan of Dave Eggers, Joan Didion, Raymond Carver, Michael Ondaatje, Anne Carson and, of course, Gabriel Garcia Márquez.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

A good one?

How and when do you find time to write?

When I’m well-rested, have some alone time and a bottle of wine. Translation: not as often as I’d like. Keeping a notebook on you at all times is helpful however.

Emerging Author of the Month: Zarmina Rafi

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Tell us about yourself.

I could say many things about myself but I think the most significant event of my life so far has been the move from Pakistan to Canada. I was born and raised in Pakistan, and have lived in Canada for about fourteen years now.

While the experience of living in, and having access to two different worlds is and has been rife with possibility, I do not think it is a situation to be romanticized. For me there was a lot of fracture in the experience, and I am dealing with much of the aftermath now. What I have gained is not insignificant, but what one loses in such a move is something I have been thinking about.

Tell us about the piece you’ve decided to share.

It’s a piece that was recently published in Filling Station, and I guess it’s a mix of fiction and memoir. Among other things it contains in it a sense of play (from a stylistic point of view).

When and why did you realize you had a passion for writing?

I always loved to read so I think there was a desire to make something similar to the things I enjoyed reading. When I was about eleven or twelve I would read up to three Sweet Valley High series books on a daily basis.

While the books were not literary in nature, perhaps they instilled in me an appreciation for character, drama and plot. I took Writer’s Craft in high school and then too I desired to become a writer. It’s the only thing I had wanted to be. I also liked analyzing texts in school. There was some joy for me in reading what could be between the lines.

What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you?

This is a difficult question because I have been moved by different writers and by different kinds of writing at various stages of my life. I was quite young when I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, and I thought it was fantastic, because of its characterization, and for its realistic portrayal of a city teeming with so much. I like J. M. Coetzee’s work for its precision and clarity, but also because at the end of any of his works one feels as though she has traveled across highly complex physical and psychological terrains. I also like works that are layered and complicates genre, here I’m thinking of writers such as W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolano. In the last two years I have been reading a lot of avant-garde poetry (Canadian and otherwise). There are some great poets coming out of Vancouver. Probably all of the poets in Coach House’s Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women’s Poetry and Poetics, I found have been inspiring to me. I think Gertrude Stein is great. T.S. Eliot was a big favourite earlier on. I’m sure I’ve missed some other names . . . Oh yes, Duras, I like Marguerite Duras very much. I also like Nella Larsen from the Harlem Renaissance.

What kind of writer do you aspire to be?

In writing and in art, I would like to be as close as possible to the truth of what I see in the world, and/or how I see the world. By truth I don’t mean a universal truth. I mean a truth that is truthful to the core of my being in how I receive the natural world and the material world. I think the job of writers/artists is to collect images and experiences and sensations. Sometimes we sift through these to get to the kernel of a story, and at other times we expand upon these to create an accumulation or texture out of seemingly disparate chunks.

As in any other activity that I engage in, in writing too I aspire to be exactly like my own self, which means that at all times I must be able to and open to move, prod, find, question or wonder upon any object, person, place or thing of interest. I do not wish to impart wisdom to my readers, there is no wisdom to be imparted. It’s all in being curious, in the world and on paper.

How and when do you find time to write?

Even though I have been writing for the past ten years, it’s only in the last two years that I have spent much of my spare time writing. On average I work 4–5 days a week, and when I’m not at work, I am writing. I rent a space where I go to write and having that dedicated space has been a big part of getting the work done.

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