The Man in 119

Kazim Ali's latest collection uses a migrant geography to explore how the self moves through grief.

The Man in 119, the latest collection from accomplished poet Kazim Ali, explores loss and absence alongside the human body and the natural world. Here, the tongue becomes a collaboration between human and glacial current--the self, a "tectonic topography of god." Grappling with questions of mortality in the wake of his mother's passing, Ali asks where we go when we leave this world: "earth or sky or memory only." With musicality, these poems build a space for contemplation, offering vignettes of various individuals, memories, and geographies. We learn that in migration, the body moves, reproduces itself through the experience of losing and living still.

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. He has written novels, essay collections, translations, a work of memoir, and several poetry collections, including Sukun (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), The Voice of Sheila Chandra (Alice James Books, 2020), Inquisition (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), All One's Blue (HarperCollins India, 2016), Wind Instrument (Spork Press, 2014), Sky Ward (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; Bright Felon (Wesleyan University Press, 2009); The Fortieth Day (BOA Editions, 2008); and The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005), winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award. He has also edited New Moons, an anthology of writing by North American Muslims and written essay collections on the poetics of Lucille Clifton and Agha Shahid Ali. He is a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego and founder of the non-profit small poetry press, Nightboat Books.