Anahita Jamali Rad was born in Iran and now lives on Salish Coast territories. She has published several chapbooks in addition to one full-length book of poetry. Jamali Rad describes her work on her website thus: “Informed by anti-imperialist materialist theory, her work is primarily textual and explores materiality, history, affect, ideology, violence, class, collectivity, desire, place, and displacement.”
Poetry
For Love and Autonomy
Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2016.
9th floor PS8635 .A336 F67 2016
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Anahita Jamali Rad’s debut book of poetry juxtaposes Marxist economics with pop culture lyrics, from FKA Twigs to Sonic Youth, tangling the “You & I” of relationships and social identification. She asks: How is it possible to communicate when the “I” speaks from the margins? Who is the “I” when Motown’s doo-wop and post-punk’s Telecaster jangles shake up the body’s rhythm?
Jamali Rad deals with the stuff of everyday life: work and sex, friendship and love. Her critical attention to the structure of these social relations creates a poetics of trial and failure, questioning the very “culture” responsible for its making as she forges a way for the possibility of radical resistance in language.