92
2014
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
number 23
The Water Calls You: An Interview with Anjail Rashida Ahmad
by Amber Flora Thomas
courtesy of Anjail Rashida Ahmad
*
Thomas interviewed Ahmad in her home in Greensboro, NC, in the fall of 2012, with followup questions via email. The interview was transcribed from the recorded interview by NCLR interns, then edited and organized for clarity and flow, while remaining true to the voices and intentions of the speakers.
I met Anjail Rashida Ahmad twenty years ago at the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop in Squaw Valley, California. I found myself gravitating toward Anjail during the week-long writing intensive workshop, perhaps because we were two of the few African American poets in attendance, or maybe because I could sense the strength and determination she exuded. I was only beginning to realize how much I needed to borrow some of that strength to get where I would go in the next twenty years. At twenty-two, I knew nothing of the lives of black women in academia. It was the summer of 1994, and Anjail had just finished her MA in English at New York University. In August, she was headed to the University of Missouri-Columbia to start a PhD in English with an emphasis in creative writing, which she finished in 2003. She was in the thick of it, publishing poetry, attending retreats like the Squaw Valley poetry workshop, and generally making her name and her writing known to a national audience. I have a vivid memory of sitting with Anjail in the warm mountain sun. She still had her sight at the time, and I felt her looking at me hard because I was way too green, not fully grasping the precarious balance a woman, an African American woman especially, needed to execute to make it in a world where so few blacks ventured. Well, somehow we both landed where we set out to be so many years ago. Anjail has published two books of poetry, The Color of Memory (Clear Vision Press, 1997) and Necessary Kindling (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), and taught at universities across the United States. She joined the faculty at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro in 2003 and is now an associate professor and the director of the creative writing program. She lost her eyesight in 2000 and has adapted to one of the most extreme changes a person can experience. When Margaret Bauer asked me to interview Anjail for NCLR, I could not believe my luck.* I had wondered about her over the years and here we both were, a few hundred miles apart in North Carolina. If I believed in accidents before, I certainly do not now. I just feel very fortunate to have found her and to see her strength and determination as strong as ever.
Above Anjail Rashida Ahmad
Beach photography by Dale Foshe of Dogwood Photography throughout this interview is of Holden Beach, NC, which comes up toward the end of the interview
Amber Flora Thomas is an Assistant Professor of poetry at ECU. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Thomas is the recipient of several poetry awards, including the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines and two collections, Eye of Water (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), which won the Cave Canem Prize, and The Rabbits Could Sing (University of Alaska Press, 2012).