Photo of Ayda Niknami

In this brief interview, PRISM’s outgoing poetry editor Dora Prieto asks incoming poetry editor Ayda Niknami a few questions

Dora Prieto: How would you describe your journey to poetry?

Ayda Niknami: I’ve been writing poetry for as long as I can remember. When I was 19, I got involved in the spoken word scene in “Vancouver” and began performing poetry for a few years. Later on, my writing stayed on the back burner while I explored other creative and academic outlets, but I picked it up again with intensity when I started the MFA program in September 2023. Poetry has been many things for me but more than anything it’s a way I process experience and solidify my narrative around particular events/feelings.

DP: What are some of the things you’re looking for in poetry this year?

AN: I’m looking for poetry that moves me, that changes the way I think or shifts my perspective. I love poems that subvert the reader’s expectations, poems that are raw and honest, and poems that speak to what’s going on in the world.

DP: Top three favourite poems at the moment?

AN: “Love is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“To Have Without Holding” by Marge Piercy
“[Trying to see the proportional relation]” by Ariana Reines

DP: What are some non-literary influences that have shaped you?

AN: Philosophy (which I did my previous degrees in). In particular, Nietzsche, Camus, Spinoza, among others. And music: artists like Chynna Rogers, Dua Saleh, ABRA, Burial, Sevdaliza, Kadhja Bonet, are all on repeat for me recently.

DP: Pet peeves?

AN: Being interrupted, changing a song halfway through instead of adding to the queue, and people who text while driving.

DP: Anything else?

AN: I’m so excited and honoured to be joining the PRISM team! I’m especially looking forward to reading the submissions for the SPELLS issue (63.1).

Ayda Niknami (she/they) is a Qashqai-Irani queer femme currently residing on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, and the incoming poetry editor for PRISM International. A life-long writer, Ayda has been performing poetry capriciously since 2014. Her work explores Iranian diasporic subjectivity, love, and relational autonomy. She is currently completing an MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Ayda also holds an MA in Philosophy from UC San Diego, as well as a BA in Philosophy from Simon Fraser University. Her primary areas of research have included ethics, history of philosophy (particularly 18th and 19th century German philosophy), and more recently, topics in the philosophy of love. Her MA research project explored the relationship between jealousy, relational norms of exclusivity, and secure attachment.

Dora Prieto (she/ella) is an emerging poet, translator, and the outgoing poetry editor of PRISM international. Her poem “the withholding map” won the 2022 Room Magazine Poetry Contest and she was shortlisted for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her work appears in publications including Acentos Review, Capilano Review, GUTS magazine, and Catapult, and has been exhibited at The Vancouver Latin American Film Festival, the International Comics Arts Festival, and the Belkin Art Gallery. She also co-facilitates a creative writing and analog cinema workshop called El Mashup for Latinx youth in Vancouver. Dora lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations where’s she just completed her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia.