Ananke, in collaboration with independent, award-winning publishing house Yoda Press, is organizing an exclusive digital book launch: ‘Sum of Worlds – A Conversation with Naima Rashid’ on February 20th, 2025 at 1.00 PM UK, 5.00 PM UAE, 6.30 PM India .
Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator who works between Urdu, Punjabi, French and English. Her work has been long-listed for National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. Her published translations include critically acclaimed translations of works by Ali Akbar Natiq (Naulakhi Kothi, Penguin India, 2023) and Perveen Shakir (Defiance of the Rose, Oxford University Press, 2019) and a joint translation from French (Chicanes, Les Fugitives, 2023). Her most recent work is a poetry collection, Sum of Worlds (Yoda Press, 2024). Her work and views have been widely published internationally including in Wild Court, Poetry Birmingham, The Scores and Asymptote. She has conducted translation workshops with Shadow Heroes and will be conducting one with Bristol Translates in 2025. At present, she is working on her short story collection and her novel.
Talking about the poetry collection, Naima said: ““In Sum of Worlds, I look for anchor at the meeting of body, mind and place. Evolved, grown or divided into our many selves through the roles, places and pain that we inhabit, who (all) are we really? Where do we ‘belong’?”
“I am obsessed with the body as a site for all the answers. Both trauma and healing are borne through the body. Like a wise old woman, it knows the truths that remain hidden even from our minds. We can’t be at home anywhere in the world unless we first come home to ourselves. The poems in this volume testify to the fact that the tense of home is not the present perfect but the present continuous. It is the always-becoming, the never-quite-arriving. And paradoxically, finding peace and grounding in that,” she added.
A book of poetry, Sum of Worlds, is a journey of self-discovery both the poet and her readers embark upon; reflecting and navigating through a myriad of questions – “Which worlds do you cross when you meet all parts of yourself, broken and whole, in a great and courageous reckoning? The places you have lived in – how do they change the contours of your self? How do these altered geographies show up when the self unfurls?” Published by Yoda Press during the last quarter of 2024, noted writers and academics have praised the range and depth of the work.
“Naima Rashid’s Sum of Worlds takes readers on a journey through the fabric of human experience, woven as it is with delicate threads of memory, emotion, and introspection. Rashid’s poems paint vivid portraits of characters grappling with the complexities of life, love, and loss. Rather than simply adding up or subtracting her literary realms, the poet instead enters the intimate spaces of individuals whose lives intersect with the fabric of history, tradition, and personal struggle. Through lyrical vignettes, she explores themes of identity, resilience, and the enduring power of human connection. This is recommended reading for poetry lovers.”
Talking about Naima’s collection, Claire Chambers, Professor of Global Literature, University of York opined: “Rashid’s poems paint vivid portraits of characters grappling with the complexities of life, love, and loss. the poet . . . enters the intimate spaces of individuals whose lives intersect with the fabric of history, tradition, and personal struggle. This is recommended reading for poetry lovers.”
“Rashid’s poems are devastating, immediate, angry, and pulsating with an energy that took my breath away,” remarked Shazaf Fatima, author of ‘A woman on a suitcase.’
Talking about the book, publisher and founder Yoda Press, Arpita Das said: “Naima Rashid’s verses feel deeply familiar and yet jolt you into a renewed understanding of a whole range of comfortable and uncomfortable intimacies.”
The digital book launch event and intends to invite a select number of thinkers, academicians as well as students who will explore Sum of World’s expression into the very public and private patterns of living, woven together by love, loss and everything in between. Sum Of Worlds – A Conversation With Naima Rashid will be live-streamed on Ananke’sYouTube page and can be viewed on Facebook.
