{"id":16241,"date":"2023-05-02T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T06:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/?p=16241"},"modified":"2024-03-16T01:45:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T20:45:27","slug":"29-leads-to-love-salimah-valianis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/29-leads-to-love-salimah-valianis\/","title":{"rendered":"Zig-zagging through space and time: Salimah Valiani\u2019s 29 leads to love<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Poet, activist, and researcher Salimah Valiani\u2019s 29 leads to love <\/em>is an exploration of relationships to the past, to place, and to the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Salimah Valiani. 29 leads to love<\/em>.\u00a0Toronto, Ontario: Inanna Publications, 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It is primarily concerned with ecocide, which is defined by Oxford Languages as \u201cthe destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action.\u201d This focus is evident in the poet\u2019s many meditations on the state of the environment and her connection to nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are moments of beauty and calm that demonstrate a deep respect for the subject matter, such as in \u201cOn love (ii)\u201d where Valiani writes, \u201cthe leaves were \/ to cheek \/ what wind was \/ to leaves.\u201d Here, she writes of a soft caress from an innocuous moment communing with nature, or a \u201cpiece of peace \/ amid hectic city heaving\u201d as she so aptly puts it. Similarly, in \u201cOn love (vi)\u201d she describes \u201cdiamonds of sunlight touching water,\u201d reverently capturing that magical, glittery quality of a setting sun across a lake or an ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collection is also concerned with our contemporary definition of love, challenging how narrow it can be. The 29 leads to love in question ponder all the different forms, facets and types of love that can exist in our world\u2014whether it\u2019s love for one\u2019s community or heritage, or a love for honoring history accurately and for uplifting grassroots activists. Valiani writes of love found, love lost, love soured and rediscovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is also a level of self-awareness that permeates the text. For instance, in \u201cConserve a Exposi\u00e7\u00e3o,\u201d the spacing between words and stanzas varies, drawing out the short lines and giving the poem a sense of movement across the page. What\u2019s more, there is a line in the middle of the page that reads, \u201csculpture distanced from imperiousness.\u201d This line feels particularly striking because of the so-called sculpted distance between words and letters within the very poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poet references moments across space and time, bringing the reader everywhere from 1780s Mexico City, to the northern cape of South Africa, to a protest in Toronto. In some instances, she employs linguistic and cultural references without any further explanation, giving much credit to the reader and indeed encouraging them to take responsibility to engage with the text fully. In other poems, she invites the reader into the world she\u2019s describing, using footnotes in poems like \u201cMexico City or, On love (vii),\u201d to offer immediate context clues and enough explanation to appreciate the text at first read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the text is steeped with an understanding of history, and an implicit desire for others to think critically about the events that have led to the systems within which we operate today. For example, in \u201cFor the Eastern Ghats\u201d she writes: \u201ctwo houses or more make a village, the British said \/ to impose tax.\u201d The way these lines are written is particularly heartbreaking because in that space between finishing the first line and reading the second one, at first one might think the poem is talking about finding strength in community amidst colonial oppression; but, the short stark punch of the following line about the ensuing taxation of this colonial arrangement emphasizes how so much of this world has been constructed to benefit the wealthy few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Salimah Valiani\u2019s 29 leads to love<\/em> is rife with both abstract musings and specific callbacks, broadly reflecting on the ways we record and remember our relationships to culture, history, and the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bios<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Amelia Eqbal<\/a><\/h3>\r\n

Amelia Eqbal<\/strong>\u00a0is a podcast producer and freelance writer based in Mississauga, ON. Passionate about theatre, sitcoms and all things pop culture, she can be found on Twitter @ameliaeqbal<\/a>.\u00a0[updated April 2023]<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poet, activist, and researcher Salimah Valiani\u2019s 29 leads to love is an exploration of relationships to the past, to place, and to the natural world. It is primarily concerned with ecocide, which is defined by Oxford Languages as \u201cthe destruction of the natural environment by deliberate or negligent human action.\u201d This focus is evident in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"1400","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"16394,16262,16232,17426","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1400],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[191],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3133],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16241"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16964,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16241\/revisions\/16964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=16241"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=16241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}