By IRA MATH­UR

Am­i­na Ali, a T&T writer with a diplo­ma in dress and de­sign, and cur­rent­ly pe­rus­ing a part time de­gree in psy­chol­o­gy is to­day’s fea­tured writer on Book­Shelf.

The self pub­lished writer was cho­sen among Bo­cas Lit Fest’s ‘New Voic­es’ in 2023 for her col­lec­tion of po­ems ‘Lilac Hon­ey’.

Ali, who has strug­gled to get her own work pub­lished, launched her com­pa­ny House Of Lilac Pub­lish­ing in March this year and of­fers as­pir­ing writ­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go pub­lish­ing ser­vices in­clud­ing proof­read­ing, line edit­ing, copy­writ­ing, graph­ic de­sign, il­lus­tra­tions, and book for­mat­ting.

Ali, who has in the past been dis­cour­aged by ‘failed at­tempts’ at get­ting her work pub­lished, is per­se­ver­ing at writ­ing say­ing it has helped her ‘heal’ per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

The fol­low­ing are ex­tracts from Ali’s po­ems re­pro­duced in The Guardian with full per­mis­sion from the au­thor.

The so­lar sys­tem of friend­ship

We are plan­ets that have drift­ed long dis­tances apart and I can’t tell which one of us be­came Plu­to,

is it you or is it me?

be­cause,

haven’t you heard that I’ve been look­ing for you

in this so­lar sys­tem of friend­ship –

where friends of Venus and Mars are aligned,

where Jupiter and Mer­cury are the re­minder that close knit­ted

friend­ships are still in ex­is­tence since ear­ly big bang years, where Uranus and Sat­urn shares too many iden­ti­cal traits of fal­si­fied friend­ing plan­ets,

whilst the rest of oth­er friend­ing plan­ets re­side qui­et­ly among dis­tance,

and for you and for I– we’ve drift­ed till one of us be­came Nep­tune

and the oth­er be­came Plu­to.

You’re the por­trait

How hon­est, how gut wrench­ing, how yearn­ing, how scan­dalous, how mys­te­ri­ous, how well de­tailed and pry­ing; the hall­ways of a self is de­signed

to be

but look at me

a wa­tered-down por­trait

al­ways try­ing to use my best colours of acrylics

but to no avail, no one sees noth­ing

but a mas­ter­piece of sim­ple art­work

af­ter art­work, hung from the high­est nail

of a gallery, for every­one’s view­ing plea­sure

of cri­tique

be­cause af­ter all, I am noth­ing but

a wa­tered-down por­trait for show and pres­ence

like the rest of the of art­works, here

that are paint­ed in their best colours

that’s been told that they are un­heard of.

A trav­eller

Beau­ty, is every­where price­less like gold

for, I’ve got a great-great, big ques­tion from a great-great, big wan­der­er

and it goes like this . . .

will they –

be kind to this en­thu­si­as­tic heart?

will they –

be kind to this colour of skin,

where the blood flows through these veins and pumps its way to this heart

will they be?

will they be, kind to this heart

that seeks a great-great, big ad­ven­ture from a great-great big ques­tion?

What hap­pens out­side at mid­night?

When the night set­tles in­to slum­ber I will be­come the missed

mid­night stroll of;

a comet’s pass­ing

a wind’s howl

a dog’s bark

a fe­line’s purr and screech

a flick­er to flick­er be­tween street lights

that sits on a lone­ly road, to­wards home

a blar­ing of a siren alarm­ing in the near, far dis­tance a dis­tant wave that crash­es up­on a shore

a dream­er’s dream whose plot gets thick­ened

a full moon ris­ing, for­ward be­hind trees lines

with hours away

when dawn slow­ly breaks;

sec­ond by sec­ond, minute by minute

every­thing, every­one and I

around

moves and con­tin­ues

like every new sound

that be­comes every missed, mid­nights’ night time.

Faith,

I am a lifeboat in your ocean, par­tic­u­lar­ly a light­house in the mid­dle of your ocean, look­ing to re­plen­ish its worth and light

you’re ad­mired and en­vied for your purest colour of blue

but,

my great­est mem­o­ry of you, would al­ways be, cup­ping rivulets and rivulets of you each time

you made it to the shore

faith,

you are a lifeboat in my ocean par­tic­u­lar­ly, al­most an­chored as I re­learn to learn about you. sin­cere­ly, a be­liev­er to be.

Am­i­na Ali is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a col­lec­tion of po­ems, a short sto­ry col­lec­tion and a nov­el.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023.

(www.iras­room.org)