Nadine Aisha Jassat

Auntie From Let Me Tell You This (404 Ink, 2019)

My Aunt’s hands are soft and brown and they smell like cumin and coriander. She is a gardener in the kitchen. Auntie, I remember your skin the way some people remember the bus route. I know I need to trace it to go home. The world of work, bus bells and sirens are harsh alarm clocks. I would rather wake gently, in 5 am light, to your softly whispered duas welcoming the morning.

Nadine Aisha Jassat is an award-winning writer and the author of Let Me Tell You This (404 Ink). Her poetry, narrative non-fiction and short stories feature widely online and in print, including in the celebrated anthology It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race (Picador), Nasty Women (404 Ink), Staying Human (Bloodaxe Books) and more. She has performed her work internationally and has drawn significant acclaim, including receiving a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and being shortlisted for the prestigious Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. In 2019, she was named by Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay in her International Literature Showcase selection of 10 Compelling ‘BAME’ writers working in the UK, and in 2020 she took part in Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Outriders Africa.

StAnza brings poetry to audiences and enables encounters with poetry through events and projects in Scotland and beyond, especially their annual spring festival in St Andrews. www.stanzapoetry.org Facebook: stanzapoetry Instagram: @stanzapoetry