A.A. Ali: Bocas Lit Fest’s New Voice 2023
Amina Ali, a T&T writer with a diploma in dress and design, and currently perusing a part time degree in psychology is today’s featured writer on BookShelf. The self published writer was chosen among Bocas Lit Fest’s ‘New Voices’ in 2023 for her collection of poems ‘Lilac Honey’. Ali, who has struggled to get her own work published, launched her company House Of Lilac Publishing in March this year and offers aspiring writers in Trinidad and Tobago publishing services including proofreading, line editing, copywriting, graphic design, illustrations, and book formatting.
Ali, who has in the past been discouraged by ‘failed attempts’ at getting her work published, is persevering at writing saying it has helped her ‘heal’ personally and professionally. The following are extracts from Ali’s poems reproduced in The Guardian with full permission from the author.
The solar system of friendship
We are planets that have drifted long distances apart and I can’t tell which one of us became Pluto, is it you or is it me? because, haven’t you heard that I’ve been looking for you in this solar system of friendship – where friends of Venus and Mars are aligned, where Jupiter and Mercury are the reminder that close knitted friendships are still in existence since early big bang years, where Uranus and Saturn shares too many identical traits of falsified friending planets, whilst the rest of other friending planets reside quietly among distance, and for you and for I– we’ve drifted till one of us became Neptune and the other became Pluto.
You’re the portrait
How honest, how gut wrenching, how yearning, how scandalous, how mysterious, how well detailed and prying; the hallways of a self is designed to be but look at me a watered-down portrait always trying to use my best colours of acrylics but to no avail, no one sees nothing but a masterpiece of simple artwork after artwork, hung from the highest nail of a gallery, for everyone’s viewing pleasure of critique because after all, I am nothing but a watered-down portrait for show and presence like the rest of the of artworks, here that are painted in their best colours that’s been told that they are unheard of.
A traveller
Beauty, is everywhere priceless like gold for, I’ve got a great-great, big question from a great-great, big wanderer and it goes like this . . . will they – be kind to this enthusiastic heart? will they – be kind to this colour of skin, where the blood flows through these veins and pumps its way to this heart will they be? will they be, kind to this heart that seeks a great-great, big adventure from a great-great big question? What happens outside at midnight? When the night settles into slumber I will become the missed midnight stroll of; a comet’s passing a wind’s howl a dog’s bark a feline’s purr and screech a flicker to flicker between street lights that sits on a lonely road, towards home a blaring of a siren alarming in the near, far distance a distant wave that crashes upon a shore a dreamer’s dream whose plot gets thickened a full moon rising, forward behind trees lines with hours away when dawn slowly breaks; second by second, minute by minute everything, everyone and I around moves and continues like every new sound that becomes every missed, midnights’ night time.
Faith, I am a lifeboat in your ocean, particularly a lighthouse in the middle of your ocean, looking to replenish its worth and light you’re admired and envied for your purest colour of blue but, my greatest memory of you, would always be, cupping rivulets and rivulets of you each time you made it to the shore faith, you are a lifeboat in my ocean particularly, almost anchored as I relearn to learn about you. sincerely, a believer to be.
AMINA ALI is currently working on a collection of poems, a short story collection and a novel.
IRA MATHUR is a Guardian columnist and the winner of the non-fiction OCM Bocas Prize for Literature 2023.