Our winter issue 58.2 is out now! Get to know Bardia Sinaee, whose poem “Only the truth” appears in the issue.
Why do you live where you live?
My family and most of my friends are in Toronto. I grew up in nearby Mississauga. There are a lot of other Iranians here and I work with people from all over the world. Many poets live here or pass through.
On the other hand, I don’t know to what extent I’m in Toronto by choice anymore. The cost of living is almost unmanageable, but there are few opportunities for me elsewhere. Sometimes it smells. There aren’t enough public washrooms or accessible spaces, but just up the street there’s a place where I can drop four figures on an “artisan barn door.”
What’s the first story or poem you remember writing, and how does it relate to your current work?
In grade three or so, not long after I’d learned English, I wrote a story called “The Giant Donut.” A giant donut falls out of the sky in a small town. The citizens happily eat some of it, but then it starts to rot, so they push it into the sea.
I don’t know if it relates to my current work in any way. I suppose I was practicing three-act structure, but I don’t know that I’ve used it much since.
What is your favourite cliché? Least favourite?
I like idiomatic expressions that are outrageous on the literal level: throwing the baby out with the bathwater; cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I don’t like business clichés involving “disruption” and “innovation” because they’re often used to dress up lazy thinking or outright fraud. See Juicero, Theranos, WeWork, etc.
When do you feel most like yourself?
Sitting around a table with close friends and making increasingly stupid jokes.
What makes you nostalgic?
Foods I ate as a kid in Iran—Persian breakfast cream, gojesabz with salt, tart black mulberries—have a Proustian effect on me. It’s not impossible to get these foods in Toronto, but I worry that regularly doing so will weaken my brain’s association of them with a time and place I’ve otherwise forgotten.
Is there a question you wish you were asked more? What is it, and what would your answer be?
No one asks about favourite book titles. Mine is The Double Dream of Spring, which John Ashbery took from the painting by Giorgio de Chirico. Just saying the phrase in my head makes me wistful. A couple of other good ones are Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley and Partial List of People to Bleach by Gary Lutz.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
I almost enrolled in a five-year business degree program when I was seventeen. Close call!
What’s your all-time favourite piece of art, written or otherwise?
There is a work by Paul Klee that only exists in my head. It’s an amalgamation of all the Klee paintings and prints I’ve flipped through and scrolled past and partially forgotten.
Yang Yongliang’s Day of Perpetual Night and Journey to the Dark installations, though I’ve never seen them in person, make me feel impossibly small and gargantuan at the same time.
How can readers find your work/support you?
There are a few copies of my last chapbook, Salamander Festival, available on Etsy. My first trade book, Intruder, will be published by Anansi in Spring 2021; please buy it when it comes out and invite me to read in your city or town.
I’m also available for hire as a freelance editor. I have experience doing developmental edits on poetry, as well as copyediting and proofreading academic and trade manuscripts. And this is not just something I do for money; I really enjoy it. If you need an editor, kindly ask the PRISM folks for my email.
Bardia Sinaee was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Toronto. His poems have appeared in magazines across Canada and in several editions of Best Canadian Poetry in English. His first collection, Intruder, is forthcoming from Anansi in Spring 2021.