Nazifa Islam is the author of the poetry collections Searching for a Pulse (Whitepoint Press, 2013) and Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems (Shearsman Books, 2021). Her poems and paintings have appeared in publications including The Missouri Review, Poem-a-Day, Blue Mesa Review, Gulf Coast, RHINO, The Believer, and Beloit Poetry Journal.
She has long been fascinated by literature that is preoccupied with mental illness and the existential. Writers she admires, identifies with, and who are perpetually influencing her work include Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She attempts to dissect, examine, and explore the bipolar experience through her writing. To that end, she is currently working on a series of L.M. Montgomery found poems.
Nazifa earned her BA in English at the University of Michigan and her MFA at Oregon State University. She lives in Novi, Michigan.
INTERVIEWER
What draws you to found poetry?
NAZIFA
Fellow poet Phillip Watts Brown introduced me to found poetry back in 2013 while we were both grad students in Oregon State University’s MFA program. He proposed a writing prompt: Write a poem using only the words from an Amazon product review. To my surprise, I found that I really enjoyed the writing exercise and I suddenly saw the vast possibilities lurking under the moniker “found poem.” If I could write a relatively successful found poem using only a random Amazon product review, what could I accomplish with more sophisticated source material I felt an actual connection to?
At the time, I wanted desperately to write about my experience living with bipolar disorder; however, I found myself perpetually dissatisfied with the poems I was coming up with. They just didn’t accomplish what I wanted. Found poetry opened a door. My first series of found poems used Virginia Woolf novels (The Waves and Mrs. Dalloway) as source material; given that Woolf explores themes I also wanted to write about, her work felt like a natural fit as I started intentionally focusing on found poetry. My Virginia Woolf found poems, ultimately published in the collection Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems (Shearsman Books), satisfied me as I was finally writing poems that I felt authentically expressed my reality living with bipolar disorder. Oddly, my found poems feel much more honest than my other writing.
I think the restrictions of found poetry really spur creativity, which might seem counterintuitive; instead of having limitless options for a poem, which can feel really daunting, found poems can only develop along certain parameters. Having those parameters makes the writing process significantly easier for me—the paragraph gives me a starting point that I vastly prefer to a blank page.
INTERVIEWER
How do you select the passages from which you write your poems?
NAZIFA
When I was writing Woolf found poems, I would look through her novels for specific words that I wanted to build a poem around. My internal anxiety mantra is “Something is wrong,” so at one point I went hunting through The Waves looking for a paragraph that included those three words. I found it too. Over time, the selection process has become very random, and I’m rarely specifically drawn to a particular paragraph. It has happened before—for example, when I started writing Sylvia Plath found poems, I knew I wanted to use the famous fig tree paragraph from The Bell Jar to write a poem. In general, though, I scan through texts looking for paragraphs that I can on a logistical level use to write a found poem. The selection process is really about practicality. Are there enough pronouns in the paragraph? Are there enough verbs (including linking verbs like “is” and “was”) in the same tense? Does the paragraph provide a variety of options for adjectives? Not all paragraphs have the necessary components to build a found poem.
INTERVIEWER
What is your process for writing a found poem?
NAZIFA
Once I’ve found a paragraph that I believe will work given my strict parameters (I only use the words from a specific paragraph and don’t allow myself to repeat words, add words, or edit the language for tense or any other consideration), I type it into a Word document. Or, if the text is in the public domain, I’ll copy and paste the paragraph using a resource like Project Gutenberg. I read through the paragraph many many times to familiarize myself with the language/my options. I then start searching the paragraph for specific words—I count and keep a list of the number of “and”s, “but”s, “is”s, “to”s, etc. It’s impossible to write a found poem without having plenty of connective tissue to link ideas and create momentum. Once I have that list, I’m literally just reading through the paragraph again and again trying out different lines to see if one seems promising. Most of the time, I end up finding either the opening line of the poem or the conclusion. Then I work forwards or backwards accordingly. Every paragraph generally does have internal cohesion, which means it’s definitely possible for the poem I’m creating to also have internal cohesion. I’m a firm believer in the existence of the muse. There are days when I can stare at a paragraph for hours and end up with absolutely nothing to show for my time. Other days, the poem seems to just jump out at me.
INTERVIEWER
What is the relationship between a found poem and the original text?
NAZIFA
My Woolf found poems very much reflect the contents and intentions of their source paragraphs. I wanted to write about existential dread and bipolar disorder and Woolf often wrote about existential dread and bipolar disorder. She was the right author for me to choose as I started learning how to write found poems; the poems echo their origins quite often. Over time—as I’ve grown more confident in my skills as a writer—the relationship between the found poem and the source paragraph has become, at times, a bit diluted. For example, many of my Sylvia Plath found poems bemoan the necessity of having to be a writer. These poems do not at all reflect Plath’s views on writing; they’re an expression of my own perspective on writing. I’ve also written many L.M. Montgomery found poems that are rather grim when Montgomery is known for stories that are optimistic and joyful. I’m more capable now than I was ten years ago at adapting the source material for my own particular purposes. I’m no longer trying to strictly echo the source paragraph with my found poems; instead, I’m managing to figure out what I want to say using the words available to me. Sometimes, this results in poems that neatly reflect the source paragraph while at other times the found poem is incredibly removed from the original text.
INTERVIEWER
What draws you to Plath and Montgomery for source texts?
NAZIFA
Sylvia Plath is my favorite poet while L.M. Montgomery is my favorite novelist. I have Plath poems memorized and I read almost every Montgomery novel (Kilmeny of the Orchard tends not to make the cut) at least once a year. I feel a strong connection to their work. Woolf, Plath, and Montgomery also all have diagnoses of bipolar disorder in common—and I am continually writing about bipolar disorder. A found poem is on some level an homage to the writer who inspired it; I am very comfortable spending my writing time paying homage to these writers I love and who make me feel seen whenever I return to their work. This is especially true since my found poems—regardless of who’s providing the source paragraph—continue to feel more authentic than my attempts at “regular” poems.
INTERVIEWER
Is there anything else you would like to add?
NAZIFA
Going through the process of writing a found poem can be incredibly helpful if you’re struggling with writer’s block; the limitations end up being freeing. I personally find it incredibly rewarding to spend so much time entwined with authors I adore. Instead of looking at found poems as limiting, I think a more accurate perspective is that they’re a unique opportunity to intimately engage with language in a way that is atypical; you can stumble on some truly surprising poem possibilities when you have only a certain bank of words to work with.
