Noor Ali
Oyster River Pages: What would you say is your most interesting writing and/or artistic quirk?
Noor Ali: I begin all of my work with one word: eureka! The most common advice to overcome writer's block is to do what we know best—pour out words and watch them come together to create a work. For me, the writing process requires a story to tell before words reach a page. These topics often come to me in what I like to call eureka moments.
ORP: What books have you read more than once in your life?
NA: I look for meaning where there is none. My books are known for pages that are clay in my hands, spines that have become a story, and pages with their own form of braille. I return to the books that didn't turn out this way the first time. The copies of my childhood favorites—Anne of Green Gables, Little Princess, and the rom-coms that gave me my first butterflies—are layered with years worth of annotations.
ORP: Do you know more than one language? How does this influence your art and/or writing?
NA: My first language sounds like its birthplace. Urdu is loud, sharp, and crowded; in the mouths of my family, it mirrors the dense air and honking parades of Pakistan's streets. With an American accent that can no longer produce syllables that slap, I have taken to description in my work. My poems—collections of observations with a story that must be found in the center—are often chaotic in their own way.
ORP: What does vulnerability mean to you as an artist and/or writer?
NA: I am the product of my ancestors—women with eyes hidden wrapped in their modesty, with blood that clings to the bottoms of wells, with hands that are not their own. My vulnerability is to accept their stories as my own. It is to let the blood speak for itself, not to put a modern voice in the place of theirs.
