—Why did you choose poetry as your primary medium, and what does it offer you aesthetically?

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I think I didn’t choose poetry consciously. Poetry has been part of me since childhood. Growing up, I was always interested in literature, poetry, idioms, proverbs, and the wise words passed down for generations.

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My father would lure me in with some coins and then read poetry to me. He would try to explain it because the poetry was often difficult to understand. So I became involved with poetry very early.

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When I read poetry, I could feel it touching me, and I also saw that it could touch other people. At school, when there was a fight or an argument in class, I would sometimes remember something a poet had said or an idiom or proverb and say it at that moment. It was not exactly a solution, but somehow there would be nothing more to argue about. My classmates called me Ziyo, and they would say, “Ziyo, just make it one!” They believed I could say something that would bring everyone together.

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For a long time I lost my connection to poetry. It came back when I moved to Amsterdam. Three years ago  I was in a very bad depression, and I started taking notes on my phone because there could be ten thousand things going through my head at the same time. Somehow, those notes brought me back to poetry. Now I feel that I cannot live without it because I have to express everything that goes through my mind and body.

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Poetry allows me to share without going into every detail. It is impossible to share everything you experience, even with the person closest to you. Poetry gives me a way to share what I want discreetly and beautifully, without judging myself or worrying that it is too personal or too much. It gives me space to breathe, to be around people, and to share without feeling bad.

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I used to dance, and I still love dancing, but I have become more hesitant about it. I have often felt objectified and exoticized, even by people from our own communities. During my transition, I am also in the process of hiding more. Poetry feels safer because after performing it, I do not question myself in the same way. Maybe this will change in a few years. Maybe this will be the only book I make. I do not know. But for now, I continue writing because I want poetry to remain part of me.

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—Do you see poetry as a political tool as well? What gives your poetry its political charge?

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I see poetry as potentially political. Historically, in Central Asia, poetry was a powerful tool for fighting and bringing change—almost like the social media of its time. But I feel that people have become distant from poetry. There is a lot of “beautification” around it, and we have moved far away from understanding poetry as a political tool.

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When I perform in Europe, I often feel that my poetry is not for the people here. But even if I do not specifically use it as a political tool, the subjects I write about—migration, the loss of one’s homeland, transness, queerness, and belonging—are already highly political. The political charge is present in the experiences themselves.

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—Your book includes poems that you’ve written in Tajik first and then translated into English. How does the process of translation transform the poem—its meaning, rhythm, imagery, or emotional tone?

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In my practice, I write originally in Tajik, English, Turkish, and even Russian. Sometimes I mix them together. The book, though, contains five poems written in Tajik and translated into English. They were also transcribed to Farsi. I worked with my friend Samaneh Safari on the transcription, but it was important to preserve Tajik pronunciation and my writing style rather than to make the poems easier for Iranian readers. The other five poems were written only in English. 

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Writing in Farsi letters is a way to connect with others who speak the same language. Politically, we are quite far from one another: Iran is more connected to its neighboring countries, while we are part of Central Asia. Nevertheless, our transcription enables connection without sacrificing the particularity of the Tajik language.

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Nazira Karimi, the editor of the book, tells me, “I like your Tajik better. When you write in Tajik, it sits differently.” When I read the same poem in Tajik and English, they feel very different. You might not understand the Tajik words, but you may feel much more than when you hear the English translation. I want to perform more often in Tajik, whether or not I translate the poem. It is important for languages to be heard and to occupy space, even when the audience does not understand them.

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Jonon starts reading her poetry to me in Tajik. I hear my name between the lines, and my heart begins to beat faster.

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When I perform, I improvise based on the person in front of me and how well I know them. The poem comes to them in a particular way. Sometimes communication happens through words, but sometimes it happens through the atmosphere or the breath.

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At the same time, English allows me to approach subjects that are difficult for me to discuss in Tajik, such as sexuality and much more. Writing or performing this material in Tajik would make me feel it much more deeply and require much more energy. I also want to play with English. Sometimes I deliberately choose not to correct my verbs. Speaking English is a privilege because it gives you access to many resources, but I also have a kind of love-hate relationship with it. I wonder whether people will understand the way I write, but in the end, I think: I am going to play with it. I don’t care.

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I also tell myself: don’t love English too much. Love it, but preserve, preserve. I worry that we might lose our mother tongues. The only thing I can do is try to keep mine alive. I therefore mix the languages. I include parts in Tajik without translating them.  It is like when I cook: I improvise, but I preserve the original taste alongside the new things I mix into it.

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—Your poetry draws on recurring motifs from the Persian literary tradition—the garden, wine and drunkenness, and the poet as cupbearer to the beloved. For instance, one of your poems reads:

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I would bring wine and pour it slow and clear
Into a goblet blushed with rose, as you like.
You would drink and fall to sweet drunkenness.

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How do you reinterpret these motifs in relation to queer desire?

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To be honest, the word “Persian” brings me some discomfort. There is a lot of history of imperialism and ideas of superiority connected to this word, both in the past and, unfortunately, still today, and I don’t want to be associated with that in any way. For me, “Farsi” feels like a more neutral term that I’d use.  

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Returning to your question, I feel connected to classical poets such as Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Rumi, Zebunisso, Rudaki, and Hafez, but I also critique them and bring their poetry into dialogue with my own. I do not believe wine always represented God or something divine. Perhaps it was simply wine, and later readers reinterpreted it because they could not accept the openness of the original poetry.

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The poem you mention was written for a non-binary trans friend who loves wine. I am not personally very connected to wine—I feel more connected to choyi kabut, green tea—but it was part of our relationship. In Farsi, there is no grammatical gender, so the reader cannot know the gender of the beloved. This makes queer poetry more open than it can be in gendered languages: the poem does not impose labels, and readers can understand the relationship in their own way.

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—Literary traditions often classify writing as “female” or “male.” How does your poetry challenge these categories? How does transness shape your poetic voice?

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I have not encountered much openly trans poetry in Farsi, despite studying Tajik language and literature very intensively. This makes writing, “I don’t know if I am a man or a woman,” feel extremely freeing and bold. In English, talking about queerness may seem ordinary, but in Tajik it is really something. I hope one day to perform this poem in Tajikistan and see whether people understand how clearly it speaks about transness.

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I am searching for Tajik and Farsi words that can express transness without requiring many explanatory sentences. Some existing words are humiliating, while certain ideas I express in English do not translate naturally. But I believe every language can describe these experiences. Even if the necessary words do not yet exist, we can create them together.

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Sometimes I wonder who will read my work. Perhaps people will not read it now, but they might in fifty years. Maybe there is a purpose in writing as one of the few people in the diaspora doing this work in Tajik.

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My poetic voice therefore moves between openness and concealment: I want transness to be present, but I am still searching for the language—and the safety—to express it fully.

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—Your poetry does not shy away from painful and difficult subjects, including child sexual abuse. How do you approach writing about such traumatic experiences, and how do you balance them with poetic expression?

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I hate self-victimization. Sometimes I ask myself whether I am trauma dumping, but I do not write with that intention. It is important to share the experience as nakedly as possible because I have been a victim. At the same time, I want to move beyond the position of the victim and say what I need to say.

 

Naming this reality and performing it brings me healing. But I also write about how I survived, who supported me, and what people said while I was trying to recover. My friends, my family, and many other people appear throughout my poetry. I am speaking to them, and I hope they hear and see themselves.

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Writing is the only way I can respond to experiences that I could not respond to at the moment. It can therefore contain trauma, but it is also about emerging from it and asking whether our surroundings help us recover from harsh realities. Not every poem finds this balance, and I no longer believe I must always offer hope. When hope is present in me, I include it. When it is not, I write that absence honestly. In one poem I ask:

 

How can I blame you
when I no longer know myself—
whether to leave,
to stay,
or die,
or gather what remains of me
and walk this road to its end?

 

For me, poetic expression does not mean making trauma beautiful. It means telling the truth of the moment while continuing to search for a way through it.

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—Could you tell us how this book came into being and how your collaboration with Ruyò came about?

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When I write, I just write. I was not thinking about making a book or about the audience and how it would look. After the invitation from Ruyò, I shared my poems with the team, and we selected them together. We worked intensely—some translations of the poems went through around twenty revisions. Splitting the book into sections, for instance, was Nazira’s (editor’s) idea. 

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We were both born in Tajikistan, and I felt a kind of relief upon meeting someone who is open, who sees the world in ways close to how I see it, and who can understand where I am coming from.

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Sometimes I find myself writing or saying things in a very direct, explicit, or sharp way, and using words that can feel quite intense. Nazira has her own sharpness and her own way of seeing things, and she also has a sense for giving ideas different forms, making them more accessible yet also poetic. I think these different ways of approaching the world and the work came together quite naturally between us. There were moments when we discussed certain words or expressions, but I feel very satisfied with what we created together, and I could not be happier that this collaboration happened and that the book is here.

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—Tell me about how your collaboration with Zhanel as an illustrator shaped the book visually?

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Zhanel first read the poems in Russian translation. We then had several online meetings during which I read each poem and explained where it was written, what it meant, and how its different elements were connected. She created the illustrations from these conversations.

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I feel especially connected to the image of a person cramped in the large checkered plastic bags. I see my own life in it, as well as the lives of many people from Central Asia and elsewhere who experience migration.