Rhodes Scholarship Experience Helped Zehra Naqvi Find Her Voice

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Lifelong poetry lover and writer, Delta’s Zehra Naqvi He never thought he would write his own collection of poems.

But two years like Rhodes Academician at Oxford encouraged her to trust her voice and write more. Now, on the eve of National Poetry Month (April), Naqvi has published his first poetry collection, The knot of my tongue.

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“I found that writing poetry was connected to the same place where I was exploring the academic questions that interested me,” he said naqvi, who completed a master’s degree in migration studies and social anthropology while at the English university between 2018 and 2020.

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“It changed my life,” said Naqvi, who moved with her family to British Columbia from Karachi 23 years ago, when she was seven. “I was struggling quite a bit. And I think what Oxford brought me was some really incredible friendships… being with those women helped me loosen my tongue.

“That experience really influenced the writing of the book.”

The title of the collection, The Knot of My Tongue, is taken from the Quran and a story about Musa (the Arabic name for Moses).

“The story goes that he has a speech impediment and it was difficult for him to speak. And they asked him to go before Pharaoh and ask for the freedom of his people. And he was very nervous and anxious, and he was afraid to speak,” Naqvi said during a phone call from Malaysia, where he lived for the past few months.

“There was this prayer in the Quran where he asks God to relieve the tightness in his chest and undo the knot in his tongue so he can speak.”

Naqvi said the prayer “gifted to him” by members of his family has always been a source of encouragement. And now he plays a prominent role in a collection that confronts head-on the effects violence can have on the voice.

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“I felt like there were times when I wanted to be able to speak for myself after experiencing harm or violence. (I was) feeling very speechless, and feeling very speechless, and feeling a sense of betrayal from my body for not having the words to be able to defend myself,” Naqvi said.

“That’s what this book is about: how do you find language? How do you get through that moment of silence and how do you survive?

While dealing with her own issues, including leaving an unhealthy relationship, Naqvi said she found herself looking outward for inner strength.

“The process of writing this book was finding language. And I think, for me, it wasn’t necessarily a language that came from myself, but from everything around me,” Naqvi said. “Traditions I had grown up with. Stories they had told me. Stories of women in moments of loneliness. Conversations with friends. So, I think it was all the language around me that I listened to to write this book.”

Naqvi, winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, will soon return to Canada to promote her debut collection. But in the meantime, she writes some fiction and nonfiction.

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“After this collection, I wanted to move away from poetry and do something a little different,” Naqvi said. “I feel like I can write sentences again.”
While her focus may shift to a different form of writing, Naqvi says poetry will always have a large presence in her emotional and creative life.

“I grew up surrounded by different forms of poetry. Urdu poetry has always been around me, so I think at times it means community. At some moments, it means survival,” Naqvi said, pointing to the late Muslim American writer Agha Shahid Ali as her favorite poet, adding that his book Rooms are Never Finished (2001) inspired her work. “I think poetry has helped me survive.”

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