Overview

Poetry. South Asian Studies. The meeting of times, a secret basement press, the beauty of Urdu, a broken god, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, a woman's riotous tresses are some of the lush images that weave the rich and complex tapestry of poems in Stones Hold Water. The female speaker rejoices in her Indus Valley heritage even as she repines in poems of heartbreak and religious extremism. These poems traverse a landscape of love and loss, bringing the past to our present, expressing unfathomable grief and abiding self-discovery through lyrical storytelling. We find portals - through the melding of language and lore - to spaces redolent with the sights, sounds, smells of Pakistan. Spaces that inspire fear and courage, connection and contention.

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9781646629039

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Reviews

In her debut collection, Stones Hold Water, Zakia R. Khwaja weaves a tapestry of images-both bright and gloomy-and places it in the frame of endless time. Her craft is solid but unforced because it submits itself to the depth of emotions and a haunted sense of being. The poems in this collection demonstrate a powerful facility with words and a sure grasp on the skill of writing poetry. She is a master storyteller in verse of the personal angst brought about by shifting cultural milieus across three generations and three countries. Zakia R. Khwaja has arrived. -Harris Khalique, author of No Fortunes to Tell and recipient of the Presidential Pride of Performance Award, Pakistan The pulse beats hard in Zakia R. Khwaja's marvelous Stones Hold Water where we inhabit a palpable, multilingual experience of the Indus Valley cultural heritage teeming with elders, soothsayers, kingfishers, Urdu, vulture skies, saffron, a Eurasian Wild Boar, secrets...These poems are alive and hungry! They carry authentic wonderment and love, lamentation and longing, and especially later in the book, deep grief over human violence. At the heart of the book, the female speaker seeks, reveals, questions, and celebrates complex layers of female identity. Turn to any page, and you will find in these narratives incredibly lush lyricism and powerful rhythms. I have so much admiration for this poet and her rich, urgent connection with language. By the end of our journey, the speaker shake[s] out the bare bones / of [her] wings. The reader, still breathless from her flight, is ready to read more. -Alessandra Lynch, author of Pretty Tripwire

Author Information

Zakia R. Khwaja is a Pakistani-American poet whose work has appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, the Alabama Review, the Aleph Review, Forge, Willow Springs among others. She has served as a poetry instructor for Desi Writer's Lounge, an initiative for South Asian poets writing in English. Zakia has given readings for the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) and has been published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. She writes a blog at www.zakiarkhwaja.com on creativity and writing. Zakia's poetry focuses on the rich culture of her Indus Valley heritage as well as regional and global socio-political issues.

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