Finding Community and Reading Widely — Author Interview with Sarah Ghazal Ali

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of THEOPHANIES, selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award, and forthcoming with Alice James Books in January 2024. 

​A 2022 Djanikian Scholar, her poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, Pleiades, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. 

​Sarah is the editor of Palette Poetry and lives in Lewisburg, PA where she is a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University.

Here, Sarah Ghazal Ali shares advice for writers — from finding communities and writing routines that work for you, to experimenting with what you write and consume.

EP: Thank you so much for meeting with me today! Just to start off, what originally drew you to poetry? 

SGA: I think for me, I've always been a big reader since I was little. And I think originally when I was younger, what I really wanted to do was write novels. That was always my big daydream. But then in high school, I had an English teacher, I think maybe in 10th grade. She gave us this research assignment to pick a poet and then go do as much research as we could on one thing that they wrote. I ended up picking this random poem by Sylvia Plath called Tulips, which even now is still this poem that I'm obsessed with. 

But I think it was that assignment that initially got me interested in poetry, where before that I never really thought about what one poem can do. Being asked to spend a month just trying to find everything I could about this one poet and what led to her writing this one specific poem just really unlocked something in my brain. So I think it was the realization that something so small on the page can still be really impactful and can still hold an entire world in it. 

It's just one poem about her being in the hospital after a suicide attempt. She's mad at these flowers that someone brought her but there are just so many layers to that. But even then, that was just what got me interested in reading poetry, but I didn't really start writing it seriously until college. I took Intro to Creative Writing and just really got encouraged by my professor. That really made a big difference for me. It was where she held me back after class and called my poems interesting, and said, “I hope you stick with this and see where it goes. Keep writing even if it's just for yourself.” 

I don't know if I ever would have actually believed in myself or actually pursued poetry if someone didn't encourage me — pull me aside and say, “Hey, I see something in you.” I think that made a big difference as well.

EP: That's so cool! Speaking of guiding figures, I was wondering if you had any advice for emerging writers who are struggling with finding their creative writing communities. 

SGA: Yeah, community is hard. I think community is the thing that was the most difficult for me too. It feels like something that you want to just happen automatically, but it takes so much longer than you think it will. 

I think my advice around communities specifically, is to just really not be shy, even on digital spaces. Like for me, I think the pandemic was so strange because we all are so isolated from each other. I was in the middle of my MFA program and master's program, and then all of a sudden I had to go home. Then I was expected to just write on my own in this weird way. But Twitter was such a big part of community building during the pandemic and it has continued to be after and even now, a couple of years later. 

I think what I've really learned from being forced to rely on things like Twitter and Instagram is that if there's a writer who you really admire, talk to them, regardless of if they're the same age. 

If there’s a large age gap and you admire them, like as a teacher or mentor, email them or like go to their website and hit them up through their contact page. If it's someone closer to your age, DM them and reply to the things that they're posting — don't be shy. If you're interested in someone's work, nothing bad can come from you telling them, and that’s only the beginning of a potential connection (and maybe a potential friendship). 

My biggest piece of advice would be especially now, like use social media and the digital sphere as much as you can, and authentically. There are so many writing groups that I've seen emerge even in places like Discord, or even in Google Docs and whatnot.

I feel like if you know people who are interested in writing, make a little community out of it, even if it's just two of you — and just commit. In a way I think starting even with like these little small building blocks can really make a difference because really, you need someone to share your work with and to talk about your work with. It doesn't have to be a million people, it just needs to be someone.

In person try finding a writing group at your library or school, check if there's creative writing clubs or classes. 

Definitely put yourself out there and don't worry if it takes a while. I feel like you'll meet all sorts of people. You'll mesh with some and maybe others you won't, and that's fine. That's just part of the process.

EP: Speaking of processes, I was wondering what your writing process looks like right now.

SGA: Right now, it's weird because I'm in this stage between revision and creation.

My first book got picked up for publication, but it's not coming out until January of next year. I'm also doing this fellowship right now, where basically, I have a year associated with a university to just write ( and think and dream a little bit). 

But because I'm still tinkering with my book and revising it, I feel like I can't totally shift my focus to new work yet. So a lot of my writing process right now really just feels like rewriting when I'm pulling up old poems that I should stop looking at. And I keep thinking, “Oh, can I make this better? Should I have this in a better place in the book?” I feel like I'm still in revision mode. 

But when I was working on my first book, I was really obsessive in my writing process. If I had something that I wanted to write, I could not get up from my desk for eight hours until the poem emerged perfectly. I kind used to revise as I went — line by line, which I don't recommend. It was a very tedious long process. 

But nowadays, because I feel like I'm still in revision mode, my newer work is kind of just coming out, more fragmented and unpolished as opposed to complete poems. I don't know if it's just because I'm growing and changing or if it's because I'm still revising my first book. I don't know what the reason is, but my process has definitely changed where it feels a little less obsessive. It feels more like I'm just letting my thoughts go in whatever direction they want to and maybe putting less pressure on myself to produce perfect poems in the first go. More experimenting, and if I don't finish a draft, it's fine. I'll just come back to it later. I kind of just feel like I'm collecting a bunch of notes like a bird is like collecting, like twigs and stuff to make a nest. There's no real problem, but just a bunch of notes. It's a weird process right now.

EP: How do you keep track of all of the fragments? Or how do you organize the process?

SGA: That's a good question, because I'm not the most organized person. 

I have two notebooks that I kind of go back and forth between. Where one is like my nice fancy hardcover notebook that I keep on my desk, the other one is a softcover notebook that stick in my tote bag or whatever I'm taking out into the world with me. 

So I have these two separate places where I jot things down as needed. That'll be like ideas for poems, words that are interesting to me, or things that I want to use in a poem. Quotes from other things, etc. 

But then I’m also a big Pages person. I know most people don't use Pages, the MacBook default word processor, but I actually really like it. I feel like Google Docs gets more laggy the more pages you add, so I've kind of shifted away from Google Docs. I've also started using Scrivener. I feel like more novelists use it, but it's really useful for visualizing your work as you're going through it. I really like how stuff is organized there. So I've been slowly migrating things to be completely on Scrivener. I'm really enjoying it, but it's kind of all over the place right now.

EP: Speaking of novels, how did you know that it was time to shift from writing novels to poetry?

SGA: I think it was actually trying to write fiction. The process showed me that I wasn’t not good at it, or at least it just doesn't come naturally. Even now, it's like one of my far-fetched dreams. I really would like to write a novel one day, but fiction is so hard. Sentences are so hard. I think in that initial Intro to Creative Writing class that I took in college, it was multi-genre. So we had a poetry unit. We had a nonfiction unit, and we had a fiction unit and the poetry just came naturally, I guess. And then, when it was time to write a short story, it felt like pulling nails.

I'd never tried it before, and once I actually did try, I found it so difficult and so intimidating. But I want to say that I still think it isn't impossible. It's just something that I just need to practice more and get more comfortable with. I'm sure novelists also think it's really excruciating to write fiction and to create worlds. I don't think anyone thinks it's easy. 

I learned by just writing that poetry is what comes more naturally. It's just what I gravitated towards.

EP: You mentioned before how you bring a notebook with you around. I was wondering what sources do you think you pull from the most in terms of inspiration?

SGA: I am really nosy. We're really nosy people, so I think that I benefit and learn the most from interviews with other writers.

 Whether it's on YouTube or in literary journals – wherever I can kind of get my hands on a conversation that a writer has had. I think that's where I learned the most, even when I go to readings, it's not the reading part that I'm most excited about. It's the Q&A afterward, or the conversation that the writer is going to have with the host afterward. 

I can kind of read poems or novels individually and get something from them on my own. But actually hearing from the writer feels like a rare and special thing. I think I learned a lot from hearing other writers talk about their processes and what inspires them and what they were reading. It ends up being a really great way to make a list of additional reading for myself. 

So I really love the Paris Review interviews. It's like a really great archive that goes back decades. And then the Adroit Journal always has incredible interviews with people. And YouTube has been amazing, where if I know that, like so and so university tends to invite authors for a specific reading series, I'll look up the university and look up a poet and see if there's a conversation with them. Also podcasts I love. Writerly podcasts, where someone is interviewing a writer. Between the Covers is an amazing one that feels like a lecture —  each one where I have to pause it as I go and take notes.

That ends up being a lot of my Note-taking — just hearing writers talk about what they're obsessed with and then following the curiosity from there.

EP: Speaking of obsessions, what are some things that you find yourself returning to or gravitating towards when just writing?

SGA: A big recent one is eyes.

I feel like I have been very interested in the gaze, who looks at whom. There's been a lot of eyes in my work and also a lot of art. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about, like surveillance and living under empire — what it means to be like a person of color or Muslim woman who lives in America. We use cameras and camera phones, and if you run a red light, then there's like a camera that takes a picture of you and sends you your ticket. We're constantly being surveilled in so many different ways. And I've been exploring that a lot in my work, and it's what I can't stop thinking about. Is like how we look at each other and how we look at ourselves, and who else is looking at us. 

I have a similar interest with European art, I'm really interested in Christian iconography, as well, especially religious iconography. So how the Virgin Mary, Jesus on the cross, angels, etc, are represented in art. Often in these really graphic and violent ways. 

I was just at a museum in Philadelphia, and it was really wild to see how much blood and like wounds there are in these paintings. Because Islamic art doesn't do representation or figures at all. It's very strongly discouraged and some would even say forbidden. So I just find it so interesting to kind of see how holy figures are represented in art and then also like, what's the difference between the artist's gaze upon their subject and the writer's gaze? 

And, what is the task of producing images through words as a writer? Because we're all trying to create some kind of image, but what are the ethics and consequences of that too? Those aren't questions I have answers to. But yeah, recently, I've been really interested in the image and the gaze. 

EP: When you're learning more about a form, sometimes you face certain myths. I was wondering,  what's one myth you've faced or encountered about poetry that now is demystified?

SGA: That's such a great question. I think a big one for me is that you have to find your voice as a writer. 

I think I heard that so often and continue to hear that and it's also something that I think newer and younger writers are always asking about, like how do I find my voice? How do I establish my voice, things like that? And the more I write and the more years go by, the more I feel like there is no set voice for anyone.

I feel like if I compare a poem that I wrote like four years ago, next to one of these little drafts that I'm trying to write today, it's as if they're written by two completely different people. And I think that that's exciting. I feel like if the goal is just to develop like one singular voice, and then you never stray from that, doesn't your voice kind of get stagnant and boring? 

I think it's much more interesting to kind of see how many different voices can come out of me, and how many different styles of writing I can kind of play with and experiment with. 

I'm also personally really interested in persona, like what it means to write in a voice that isn't your own. Like, what if you try to put on someone else's mask for a little bit? What does that reveal about yourself? 

And then also, the myth of the solitary writer. Like, yes, we do spend a lot of time alone and we do a lot of our writing alone. It's just you and your brain and your page, but I very much think I wouldn't survive as a writer without a community and without friends to share to work with or without being able to read other people's work and kind of digest it. 

I think that all writing is a response. And it's all part of a conversation and no one's writing in a vacuum. So I also push against the idea that we're like, the solitary, lonely people who are just in complete isolation, and very much think that the best writing comes out of absorbing, reading, and being in conversation with lots of different people.

EP:  I love that. What are some ways that you think help when it comes to experimenting with style, the way that things look on the page with so many forms out there?

SGA: I think reading widely is the number one thing to do. I think that personally, as a writer, so much of my journey has been learning that I don't need someone else's permission to do something. 

Yeah, I feel like I've always been very, hesitant and tentative and feeling that “oh, a poem can only look like one thing or a story can only take one shape,” and “this is the way other people did it, I have to do it the same way.” Unlearning that has been really hard, but reading more diverse and varying work has really opened my eyes to the fact that there are no rules in writing. The sky's the limit. 

You can do whatever the heck you want to on the page or even not on the page. But sometimes you have to see it, but you have to see that someone else broke a rule before you feel like you have permission to break that rule. 

So yeah, I think, read everything. Look at everything. See what inspires you and I would also say, think beyond. Like the shape of a page two, I think sometimes that can feel really limiting but you don't really realize it. Make yourself experiment and break your routines. 

The way that you usually write can help unlock things in your brain, and then reading everything you can, and also imitating. I think that I learned so much from borrowing and stealing so to speak from other writers just to see — mimicking the rhythm of his line, or let me use the same word that he used to end each line and just kind of see what comes out of it. 

You don't have to publish those things like your experiments, but it doesn't mean you can't do it privately to see what you learn from that experiment. 

I think imitation and kind of experimentation is the best way to go about it, at least for me.

EP: What does your revision process look like and when you know that a poem is ready to be sent out?

SGA: I think it feels instinctual, it's kind of a gut feeling. It's a difficult thing to describe, but I think revision is the fun part of writing poetry for me.

I think the blank page kind of gives me anxiety. But once I have something down and I know I have material to work with it's kind of like my clay. Once it's there, I can figure out where a word needs to be switched out, or if it just doesn't look right on the page, or needs to take a different form, things like that.

Now, I think revision for me looks like returning to a poem at all. Even going back and looking at pieces and giving them another chance feels like revision to me. 

Knowing when a poem is done or ready to be sent out — is definitely more of a gut thing for me. If I'm like, “Okay, I think I said what I needed to say”, I think it's ready for other people to see it. So I'll send it to trusted people. And then sometimes I'm like, “No, this is brilliant. I'm doing something really cool here. I'm gonna send it to the New Yorker.”

So, I definitely follow my gut there. I think everyone kind of knows if something feels done to them or not.

EP: You’ve already shared so much golden information, what advice would you give to young or new writers? 

SGA: Read everything. Absolutely everything you can get your hands on, including stuff that you don't like, the things that you think you wouldn't be interested in. And read writers that you're resistant to. 

Because I think you can learn a lot about your own style and your own aesthetics by learning how to articulate why you don't like something, I think that that can be really instructive. That's a big one. 

Also, don't forget that there's a difference between writing and publishing. I feel like if you think about publishing and getting your work out there too often or at the wrong stage, it can stop you from writing. I think you have to really mentally divide those two things. 

And when you're writing, don't think about publishing, don't think about getting the work out there at all. Because that'll stop you. I think you have to protect your writing brain, and then let the publishing brain be something completely different that comes later.

 If you get too caught up in publishing, I think it'll hinder you in a way and then you start getting insecure and self-conscious, and that's when rejection starts to really affect you. 

So definitely separate those two and also develop really thick skin. Don't ever let rejection internalize, it's part of the process. I still get rejected all the time. I'm very early in my career. It's just part of the process. 

If you can, get involved in literary journals — being a reader or an editor. I feel like once you learn what's going on, in the back end, you develop thicker skin because you know how subjective the process is. And that also kind of helps you keep a finger on the pulse of what's going on. 

Like, what are people writing about? What are people obsessed with? Things like that. I think getting involved with a journal or magazine is a great way to learn and also to just recognize this industry works.