by Writing Workshops Staff
A month ago
In poetry, beauty often takes center stage. But what about the grotesque? What about the raw, the abject, the unflinching honesty of poetry that doesn’t just ornament reality but rips it open? Javeria Hasnain is a poet, translator, and educator who wants to expand the boundaries of what great poetry can and should explore.
A Brooklyn-based poet by way of Karachi, Hasnain is no stranger to the spaces where language meets discomfort. Her debut collection, SIN (Chestnut Review, 2024), is a masterclass in poetic transgression, delving deep into the messy, the visceral, and the unspeakable. A Fulbright scholar with an MFA from The New School, Hasnain brings both rigor and rebellion to her teaching, and in her upcoming course at WritingWorkshops.com, she invites students to do the same.
In The Grotesque and the Abject, Javeria's new 4-Week Generative Poetry Zoom Intensive, she urges poets to step beyond convention, embracing the uncomfortable and transforming it into something arresting.
Through the lens Sharon Olds, Bernadette Mayer, Sara Shagufta, and sam sax, students will learn how to wield language with unflinching boldness, crafting poetry out of what we usually look away from.
Week by week, students will push their creative limits, experimenting with form, reclaiming the body, and dismantling the human/animal dichotomy. More than just a craft class, this is an invitation to radical honesty, to see poetry not just as a medium of beauty, but as a tool for confronting the world as it is, in all its messy, glorious contradictions.
In this interview, we sit down with Hasnain to talk about shame, transformation, and why poetry needs to embrace the ugly now more than ever.
Hi Javeria, Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Hi! I am Javeria Hasnain, a poet, translator, and educator from Karachi. I am obsessed with finding contradictions in our everyday living—disgust in desire, grotesque in godly, and death in life. And most importantly, fiction in poetry. Yes, I believe in lying in my poems.
What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you are focusing on in your own writing practice? Have you noticed a need to focus on this element of craft?
I am always most interested in poems that do not shy away from saying what needs to be said. That give me moments of "haw" and "oof" and heavy gasping. I like poems with grit. And I find god in this grit.
Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect? What is your favorite part about this class you've dreamed up?
I am most excited to talk about the dual nature of desire and faith. This class will also ask the students to think critically and creatively about boundaries, both real and imagined.
With real, I mean: borders, immigration, exile, racism.
With imagined, I mean: form, line breaks, punctuations.
What was your first literary crush?
What are you currently reading?
Everything Else in the World by Stephen Dunn.
How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it is the next thing you want to write all the way to THE END?
When I can't stop thinking about something for days, weeks, months, or years.
Where do you find inspiration?
In everyday living, in conversations with friends, in teaching.
What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received that you can pass along to our readers? How did it impact your work? Why has this advice stuck with you?
Read your poems out loud.
It has helped me find music in my words, cut out what feels clunky.
What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing? Why this book?
My Trade is Mystery by Carl Phillips.
Poets are my books, it's who I study. And Carl Phillips is one such brilliant poet.
Bonus question: What’s your teaching vibe?
I have two basic rules:
1. Do not take yourself seriously.
2. Take your work seriously.
Learn more about working with Javeria:
You can sign up for Javeria's upcoming class The Grotesque and the Abject 4-Week Generative Poetry Zoom Intensive, and avoid the waitlist.
Instructor Javeria Hasnain, a Brooklyn-based poet, translator, and educator from Karachi, and the author of SIN (Chestnut Review, 2024). Her poems have appeared widely, including in Poet Lore, Pleiades, Foglifter, Rattle, and more. She received her MFA from The New School as a Fulbright scholar and is currently teaching at Habib University.
