Naming the Hungers

Tea—as botanical, fashion and obsession—is the axis around which Zeest Hashmi’s drama of empires tangles, constricts and unravelsPublished with Kulhar Books. Set in “Silk Road” tea rooms underneath the shadows of Orientalist paintings, Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s poetry collection Naming the Hungers is an experiment in liquid ekphrasis, utilizing forms such as lyric and the lesser-known qasida against an encyclopedic sojourn into global trade’s postcolonial hauntings. The result is a remarkable philosophical examination of received knowledge—whether meted out through the indiscriminate drone strike, Rudyard Kipling’s racial animus or Thomas Lipton’s plantation land-grabs—and of the mourning that accompanies the present’s dragnet on hospitable tomorrows yet unbuilt. Shadab Zeest Hashmi (born 1972) is a Pakistani American poet and essayist. Her books include the poetry collections Kohl and Chalk and Baker of Tarifa, the anthology Ghazal Cosmopolitan and the lyric memoir Comb. She has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State University as a writer-in-residence.