Interview with Sarah Ghazal Ali

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. Her poems appear in Poetry, Pleiades, Electric Literature, and Poet Lore, among other journals. An incoming Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University, she currently serves as editor for Palette Poetry. Find her at www.sarahgali.com.

Manahil: This is Canthius’s tenth issue, and the first for which we have a guest editor, Sanna Wani. Whether you’ve been a long-time reader of Canthius or are just getting introduced us, how did you come to decide what pieces you wanted to share with the magazine?

Sarah: Sanna Wani is a writer and editor who I admire and trust. I also admire Canthius’ mission to support and uplift writers of marginalized gender identities. Much of my work explores faith and femininity in ways that scare me. I tend to hold onto poems that I feel are personally risky, but this pairing of Sanna and Canthius radiated a sense of safety, a sense that the poems I didn’t feel comfortable sending to other journals would be in the best possible hands here. “Questions for Shaytan” felt borderline blasphemous to think through and write, too intimate to be shared. But I trust Sanna, and I trust Canthius, so I shushed my fear and sent it in!

Manahil: I find writing often emerges from a conversation. What conversation is happening in your work?

Sarah: Quite literally, this poem is a conversation between the speaker and Shaytan (anglicized: Satan). I’ve long been interested in the storied figures of the three Abrahamic faiths—Mary, Jesus, Sarah, Hajjar, etc…, and find myself in awe of their audacity and agency in the moments when God, in one way or another, speaks to them. I found myself turning to Shaytan, curious about his particular audacity. What does it mean to know God like that and still defy God? Many of my poems emerge in conversation with scripture with a loosely-imagined reader, but this poem was instead an attempt to conjure a figure fraught with lore and question them.

Manahil: If you can imagine Shaytan responding to any of the questions you pose, what would Shaytan say?

Sarah: Wow, this question! I could think about this for the rest of my life. I imagine there would be a conversation about arrogance and humility, about the way these qualities are deeply charged, deeply contentious. I imagine he might tell me that his faith is deeper than mine could ever hope to be.

Manahil: What is something you’re working on that you’d like to share!

Sarah: I’m nurturing my debut book of poems, Theophanies, forthcoming with Alice James Books in January 2024! I’m still in a daze that it’s going to be published. I also just started the Stadler Fellowship, and am the Poetry Editor for West Branch this year—send us your poems!

Manahil: In closing, what is a poem, story, painting, chapbook, or book you would like to recommend others read?

Sarah: I recommend the poem “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich, a touchstone for me, and the novel Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette. I was destined to love this novel from page one—the aforementioned Rich poem was quoted in the epigraph!