In this episode, Claire chats to poet, writer and editor Ashna Ali about their collection The Relativity of Living Well.
The Relativity of Living Well by Ashna Ali traces the dynamic between personal and collective struggle and grief. Chronicling the mitigation years of pandemic through an increasingly hostile geopolitical present, Ali’s poems document their journey as they grow increasingly disabled and untethered from the American Dream that brought them to the United States, offering a generous intimacy in the fog of ongoing crisis.
By turns playful and deadly serious, the poems’ emotional and political landscapes interweave to hold space for joy among dissociation, medical struggle, as well as the tensions of complicity and resistance inherent to life as a queer postcolonial subject in America.
Ashna Ali is a queer, disabled child of the Bangladeshi diaspora raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn. They are the author of the collection The Relativity of Living Well (Bone Bouquet, 2024) and the Substack,
. They serve as the Poetry Editor for Epiphany Magazine and will begin their MFA in poetry at Randolph College in December 2024.Ashna chose Diane Seuss as a poet who inspires them.
You can find out more about Ashna´s work at www.ashnaali.com.
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