“Mountains bloom and tides change in our teacups”
An interview with Holly Mason Badra, editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora
by Gregory Luce
With Sleeping in the Courtyard, Holly Mason Badra has not only brought a thing of beauty into the world but has also performed an act of exemplary literary citizenship. This volume gathers the work—poetry, fiction, memoir—of 35 Kurdish women writers. Most of the original pieces, by writers from all over the Kurdish diaspora, have been translated into English from multiple languages. To my knowledge, this is the first such collection ever created and thus is doubly valuable— shedding light on a people and culture little known by Western readers, and providing a forum in which their diverse artistic voices can be heard.
Badra, herself a Kurdish-American poet and associate director of women and gender studies at George Mason University, undertook this project in 2019. In an interview with Jadaliyya, she states, “I see this collection as the antithesis of erasure….. The project began in 2019 when Western media brought attention to Kurdish oppression through coverage of the Turkish military attacks on Kurds in Rojava. The mainstream coverage of this event led to North American and English-reading writers asking me where they could find Kurdish poetry and literature translated into English.” What little writing she could find online was primarily by male writers, so Badra cast her net widely and discovered writing by a wide array of Kurdish women in a variety of tongues, including English. Further, she said, “I really wanted to bring together a group of outstanding and diverse writers within the same space. I also really wanted to showcase an array of styles and topics.” The collection greatly succeeds in fulfilling these intentions.
I wanted to know more about Holly’s thoughts and experiences in putting together this stunning collection, and she graciously agreed to answer a few questions.
WU: Thanks for speaking with us.
First, please tell us a little about yourself, background, education, current work, or anything you’d like to share.
HMB: I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina then studied English and Dance at UNC-Greensboro. After studying abroad in Canberra, Australia during my undergraduate education, I went back after graduation and spent a year living on The Gold Coast (in Burleigh Heads). Living in Australia shaped my life and writing. For graduate study, I received an MFA in creative writing (poetry) and a Graduate Certificate in higher education administration from George Mason University. I am currently the Associate Director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. I’ve taught English, creative writing, literature, humanities, and women and gender studies courses.
WU: When did you start writing poetry and what drew you to it?
HMB: This is an exciting question to think about. I wrote some poems in grade school of course as most of us do, but I became interested in the possibilities of poetry more seriously in my high school English class with Nicole Verrone (author of Nest of Stars, Atmosphere Press). It was in my undergraduate education though—taking classes with Jennifer Grotz, Josh Exoo, and Stuart Dischell—that I began to feel encouraged and inspired to write poetry, to workshop poetry, and to carefully read and study poetry. I was actually a Dance major but switched to an English major because of the electricity I felt in my body when discussing poetry and literature in the classroom.
What drew me to this artform was the way that poetry translates the human experience. I loved the way that a poem could crystalize my feelings and make me feel more understood and less alone in my grief or other emotions. Particularly, it was Louise Glück’s “The School Children” that I read in Jennifer Grotz’ Introduction to Poetry course in which I became amazed with what poetic form can do. How Glück uses line breaks to surprise the reader and to carry layered meaning forward. Take these lines for example:
How orderly they are—the nails
on which the children hang
their overcoats of blue or yellow wool.
That line break does a lot of work in this poem exploring a mother’s emotions and vulnerability. With the power of the line break, the morbidity of the image is eased, but we still sit with the potential danger nonetheless. This poem was written quite some time ago and still carries much resonance today.
WU: How did you go about finding the work of these poets?
HMB: Like a good researcher, I used Google and the university library search engine. I also connected with Kurds in the community, mostly journalists, who introduced me to Kurdish women writers. Balen Salih, who recently passed (and too soon), is a tremendous figure within the Northern Virginia Kurdish community and beyond. He was very supportive of my project, and he told me about an event with Choman Hardi in D.C. This was how I met Choman, and at this event I also sat next to Tracy Fuad’s cousin who said “oh, my cousin is also a Kurdish-American poet.” At that point I had recently emailed Tracy to connect, and she wrote me back saying that her cousin had mentioned our meeting. I showed up to events and met writers or people who knew writers. Then the pandemic hit, and I met writers on Zoom. It was really a spiderweb approach, someone would connect me to someone who would connect me to someone, so on and so on.
WU: How many (roughly) of these pieces are originally in Kurdish and how many in English? Any other languages represented?
HMB: Half of the works were translated. But from a variety of languages: Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, and Swedish. The reason for this is not only due to diaspora and displacement but also due to linguicide and criminalization of the Kurdish language. A number of the writers in my book never had the chance to learn Kurdish (or in some cases didn’t have the opportunity to learn how to read or write in Kurdish). This is why it was important to me that for some of the Kurdish poems translated into English we included the original Kurdish dialect in the book, too.
WU: How many translators worked with you? Was it difficult to find translators?
HMB: There are around a dozen translators who worked on the translations in Sleeping in the Courtyard. I say “around” because some of the pieces are co-translated or include both a translator and an editor. Finding the translators was probably the same effort level as finding the writers. In some cases I knew the translators and not the writers that they translate. I asked them if they had any recent translations they’d like to put forward. I’m forever grateful for their careful and difficult work.
WU: And finally, what’s next for you?
HMB: I’m interested in finding space to work on my own poetry manuscript and essay collection. I also want to continue to amplify the work of Kurdish women, writers, artists, and feminists. I’m working on a piece now about the Kurdish women shaping archives. Oh, and I’ve written a children’s book that I hope to publish—my toddler loves books, so I think about children’s literature often.
It is unlikely that you will find a more compelling collection of writers anytime soon. In addition to its great literary value, Sleeping in the Courtyard provides an eye-opening introduction to a culture and people virtually unknown to most American readers. Get your copy from the publisher or from Bookshop.
Holly Mason Badra is a Kurdish-American writer. Her poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews appear in Meridian, The Arkansas International, The Rumpus, CALYX, Circumference, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is currently the associate director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She reads for Poetry Daily.
Gregory Luce is the co-founder and poetry editor of Washington Unbound. He has published six chapbooks. He lives in Arlington and serves as Poetry Editor of The Mid-Atlantic Review and writes a monthly column for the online arts journal Scene4.