Author of the poetry collection, City of Pearls (UpSet Press 2019),
Sham-e-Ali Nayeem is a Hyderabadi Muslim American poet, interdisciplinary artist and recovering social justice lawyer.
City of Pearls
“In her debut book City of Pearls, Sham-e-Ali Nayeem’s poetry offers a meditation on healing from grief. The poems ask the reader, what happens when we lose our anchor? Weaving together memories of her late father and ancestral home of Hyderabad, Nayeem’s poems explore landscapes of loss. She writes from the perspective of an Indian Muslim American who draws from the languages of her life to compose a poetics of vulnerability and tenderness. Known as the “City of Pearls,” Hyderabad’s jewels become a metaphor for resilience and growth. Each poem gains their opulence from the transmutation of the grit of migration, displacement and loss.”
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Praise for City of Pearls
“City of Pearls is one continuous gift-giver. Sham-e-Ali Nayeem lusciously, unselfishly and most certainly, unapologetically shares with us the magic and glory of story. Stories made from lived lives…full with words and images that speak of…place, purpose, father, family, fragility, strength, beauty, suffering, celebration. Stories to hold us tight…and inspire us to continue dreaming through it all.”
“I was brought back to the landscapes of my childhood by these sensitive poems. So quietly but firmly do they evoke not only the shattered rocks of Hyderabad but also the ways in which some of us live perpetually between, belong neither to one place nor the other, always in transit, always hoping for news from ‘home.”
“This book is a hamlet, a jewel box, a compass. Sham-e-Ali Nayeem strings the tender odds and ends of memory into a dazzling odyssey across the continents of daughterhood and motherhood. We are born from places as much as people, these poems remind us. City of Pearls soars with the dignity mined from a life lit with leavings.”
“There is nothing more important to love than memory, and Sham-e-Ali’s stunning debut collection is full of love. Awash in the fragrance of mourning and yearning, these poems stretch out, split into tributaries, condense into coral clouds – above all, they nourish. Both affectionate and merciless, this book is a “place where it all worked out.” It is a gift to breathe with it.”
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