My name is Alise Alousi and this is Self-portrait at 56.

I guess I found myself.

Music paused in the right square, growing bit of flesh murmuring above beltline and ah, these lines down the center of my face, eyes off kilter.

They say now there's no symmetry in space.

I relate.

Floating green earth.

I want to melt some days into a passing bus.

Once in Prague, I nearly died.

Felt the wisp of the tram at my neck.

So close my hair moved.

Daughter and husband stunned on the far curb.

Amazing really How little I still notice my surroundings most days.

Save the random like a handprint left on a wall.

Press me to say what the wall means to me and I can't.

Oh, my God, Alise, what a beautiful poem.

I mean, I am.

I feel so fortunate to be able to interview you for this series.

That poem.

It's the last poem in your first collection.

What to Count Its your first book and how you went about trying to, like, put together a collection Tell me about it.

Yeah, I mean, that's such a great question.

Thank you so much for having me, Nandi.

I'm really excited to have this conversation with you.

Yeah, because this is my first book and I was older when I published it.

It was quite a process and sort of a longer piece of it for me was figuring out the order of the book.

And I got some really good advice early on that the book really needed to have sections.

Parts of the book are set in Detroit.

Parts of the book are in Baghdad, where my dad is from.

And so just being able to sort of give people space and signals to those kind of scene shifts and also shifts in time.

And so the last poem in the book is actually one of the last poems that I wrote before the book got published.

And so it was just a sort of a reflection on where I was in my life at that time and sort of felt like the right end point, like this is the end of this chapter in a way, and this book as well.

You just said something that's really important.

That is one of the reasons I really wanted to talk to you, because you talked about your father being from Baghdad.

And I think that a lot of people forget that like Michigan is really a center for Arab-American culture, for community.

And I know it shows up a lot in your writing.

And I just wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about what it means to be writing within that community, outside of that community.

How does... how do you go about doing that?

Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right.

I feel really fortunate to have grown up where I did because we are surrounded by the largest Arab-American community outside the Arab world.

And I did get a lot of support from organizations in that community for sure.

That brought in really prominent Arab writers that were writing on a national level.

So being able to study when I was pretty young with Naomi Shihab Nye and Khaled Mattawa and other poets like that, really shaped sort of not just my writing, but also how I saw myself.

I because I come from a mixed background.

My mother is American, my dad is Arab, sort of always negotiating like, where do I fit in the culture is really important to me.

And so having those early experiences was really pivotal and and feeling like I was part of a community.

I mean, Detroit to me has the best writing community.

And I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about what it's meant to you too.

But for me, the level of support that we give each other and that we get from each other is just like the most beautiful thing in the world.

And so, yes, being part of the Arab community was important, but also just like growing up in Detroit and going to school at Wayne State and being a part of like sort of an arts community, an activist community in Detroit really did shape how I saw myself and and definitely a lot of my writing as well.

You said you're saying all these things.

That also just resonate with me and my writing career too, like the activism Detroit as a space to like write from.

And having like such strong influences by these very incredible writers like Detroit is a writing city, and I think sometimes people in Michigan forget how talented we are as writers because we have such so, so many strong writers, right?

Yeah, It's unusual, I would say.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

So I like I have a question for you, like about influences.

What like what inspires you, What gets you going and whether it's a poet, a music, whatever.

Like, I'm just curious about what helps you go back to the page.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think I draw inspiration from lots of places.

I would say one sort of primary place is definitely visual art.

I love visual art and there are a number of poems in my book that are inspired by pieces of artwork, primarily paintings, and then a lot of sort of like what's happening in the world also, I would say, comes into play at times.

Memory is a big thing that I come back to, you know, like lately, and I'm going to ask you a question.

I'm curious, like what you've been thinking about lately with your writing.

Oh, like I said, I'm very nostalgic as well right now.

There are two kinds of spaces of memory that I've been thinking about with my own writing, and that has to do with historical moments and also personal moments.

And so I've been writing a lot about events that happened in the nineties, and some of them happened in Detroit.

Some of them are kind of global because I grew up in the nineties.

I was ten when they started and 20 when they ended.

But I've also been thinking about how we as a collective community remember how we lose things based on like the way that it's been recorded in technology.

Whether it's like that we commemorate an event with a mural or we actually create recordings and documentaries like how the Internet has created a different kind of archive that is still fleeting and maybe oversaturated.

And so, yeah, my poetry is really different these days because I've been thinking a lot about whose story are we remembering?

Yeah, yeah, that, that sounds incredible.

And I think like that idea of like what's happening on a personal level and then what's happening, you know, nationally, globally what's happening even really super hyper locally and you know, how do we capture those things?

And to me for sure, like a recording, there is nothing like that.

You know, hearing somebody's voice, hearing them tell their story is is such a powerful thing.

Oh, you're make me go home and write another poem.

I love that.

But I mean, before I go home, I really want to hear another poem from you.

And so can you tell us a little bit more about the poem that you're going to share before we have you read it?

Sure, I'd love to.

It's called On the Last Night and it's sort of in that tradition of poetry that is thinking about like, what will I be doing in those last moments of my life.

I'm getting older.

And so I just sort of started collecting memories.

And also people that like some of whom are sort of small little interactions that I still come back to and think about.

And, and then it's sort of also written toward my husband and our early meeting and then where we are now.

And payphones definitely play a part in it as well.

All right.

Well, I'm excited to hear it.

Thank you Nandi!

Thank you.

This has been amazing.

On the Last Night.

On the last night, I'd find a payphone outside a donut shop in Detroit Glow of light sugar smelled of cold It's heavy Lift Call you to say that even now I am running late When your brothers were still alive and no one knew what was to come Break bread in a snowstorm after laboring after dressing in modest miniskirt and tights and my best hair curl like a spoon or spine Book to book We talk all night on the sofa Not meant for soft bodies to think I'll never shower again, never repeat myself or lather, rinse cucumbers Think of my father His brown hands I'll miss all the hands and trees I couldn't name Looking out a window, drinking coffee, alleys, sound of our door closing When you came home In another life Every time I went to the movies, someone broke into my house, took my clothes and baskets from the floor My thrifted black leather jacket that survived a knife fight They were kids In the end, it's time to consider everything lost that gave us something Woman on a bus who acted as a mother Man in a motorcycle club Who made a phone call Library Where I buried myself at 18 All the songs and poems and steps towards something big or small The times I called you and you answered or didn't And I kept hitting redial My impatient permanence, my never giving up