Moez Surani (born April 10, 1979) is a Canadian poet and artist. He is the author of the poetry collections ''Reticent Bodies'' and ''Floating Life'', and the booklength poem ''عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Операция''. His fourth book is titled ''Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real''. Surani is the nephew of developmental biologist Azim Surani.

Career

Poems from Surani's debut collection, ''Reticent Bodies'', began appearing in 2001, when Canadian poet

Todd Swift Stanley Todd Swift (born April 8, 1966), is a British-Canadian poet, screenwriter, university teacher, editor, critic, and publisher based in the United Kingdom. Background Swift was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and raised in Saint-Lambe ...

published the anthology ''100 Poets Against the War.'' Surani's "Realpolitik," initially published under the pseudonym "d.m.," was selected as part of this critique of the

Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...

. In 2001, he won the Kingston Literary Award and Queen's University's richest writing prize, the Helen Richards Campbell Memorial Scholarship for excellence in creative writing. From 2002 to 2008, his poetry was published in Canada and abroad. ''The Dublin Quarterly'' selected his poem "Alley Dolle" as their choice for their 2005 poem of the year, citing its "movement and music." ''Reticent Bodies'' was published in fall, 2009. Poet and critic Jacob McArthur Mooney stated that the book is a return to the Canadian romantic mode of

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...

and

Irving Layton Irving Peter Layton, OC (March 12, 1912 – January 4, 2006) was a Romanian-born Canadian poet. He was known for his "tell it like it is" style which won him a wide following but also made him enemies. As T. Jacobs notes in his biography (2001 ...

. In the ''Journal of Canadian Poetry'', another review praised the book for its expressiveness. In 2008, Surani received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship to visit his ancestral homelands,

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

and

East Africa East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the Africa, African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the regi ...

. During this trip, Surani wrote "Kilimanjaro Journal" and the poem "Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real," which won the ''Antigonish Reviews Great Blue Heron Poetry Prize in 2010. That award's jury citation states that the poem "dramatizes the tension between the world of the collective myth and poetic imagination on the one hand and individual experience and empirical decision on the other." Surani's second poetry collection, ''Floating Life'', was published in spring, 2012. The book's themes have been characterized as travel, "connections made and left behind, and, above all, the fleeting nature of experience." In interview, Surani said that ''Floating Lifes prevailing theme is a divestment of personal power. Surani's poem "It All Keeps" was included in ''Best Canadian Poetry 2013'' and "Poems to be Performed by kevin mcpherson eckhoff (with or without a Green Elfin Mask)" was included in ''Best Canadian Poetry 2014.'' In 2014, Surani exhibited a work in progress, ''عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Операция''. This poem collects together the names of military operations by 192 UN-member countries from the founding of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

to the present. In 2018, Surani and Canadian artist Nina Leo exhibited two scents, My

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

and My Waco in the custom scent work, ''Heresies.'' In 2018, Surani and Leo also exhibited ''The Irrefutable Border: China Series.'' In 2019, Surani was awarded a

MacDowell Colony MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The program was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDo ...

fellowship. Surani has defined poetry as "the residue of living."

Poetry

* ''Reticent Bodies'' (2009) * ''Floating Life'' (2012) * ''عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Операция'' (2016) * ''Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real'' (2019)

Fiction

* ''The Legend of Baraffo'' (2023)

Art

* ''Heresies'' (2018) * ''The Irrefutable Border: China Series'' (2018) * ''The Irrefutable Border: Canada Series'' (2021) * ''Was Yesterday So Much Better Than Today?'' (2021) * ''Summa'' (2023)

References

External links

Author's Website

Publisher's web page on Surani

Publisher's web page on Surani

Excerpt of ''عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Операция'' in ''Harper's Magazine''

* ttps://www.cbc.ca/books/the-150-page-poem-that-moez-surani-spent-four-years-writing-1.4024769 CBC interview with Surani about ''عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Операция''
An hour-long interview with Norway's House of Literature How to Proceed podcast series

An essay on Surani and Leo's collaboration by Steven Matijcio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Surani, Moez 20th-century Canadian poets Canadian male poets Poets from Montreal Queen's University at Kingston alumni Canadian writers of Asian descent Concordia University alumni Living people Kenyan people of Indian descent Poets from Toronto 1979 births Canadian people of Indian descent 20th-century Canadian male writers