Sheniz Janmohamed is a spoken word artist, poet, and freelance writer and educator based in Toronto. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Janmohamed is also a nature artist who creates ephemeral land art. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been creating, documenting and destroying daily sand art.
Poetry
Bleeding Light: Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 2010.
PS8619 .A6763 B54 2010
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Bleeding Light is a collection of poems in ghazal form that traces the steps of a woman’s journey through night. She knows that in order to witness dawn, she has to travel through dusk first. Throughout her journey, she is caught between West and East, religion and heresy, love and anti-love, darkness and the knowledge of light. Each couplet is an independent thought and reflection, a pearl strung into a necklace. Bleeding Light is fraught with opposing, stark and often violent imagery heavily influenced by Sufi philosophy.
Poetry
Firesmoke: Poems
Toronto: TSAR, 2014.
PS8619 .A6764 F57 2014
Publisher’s Synopsis
Sheniz Janmohamed’s second collection continues the poet’s journey, tracing the inception and annihilation of sacred fire. In a series of highly evocative, personal poems, Firesmoke explores the meaning of truth and self, finding them both in form and emptiness. In her unorthodox, broadminded quest for understanding, Sheniz evokes the teachings of Sufism, acknowledges the restorative power of the Mother Goddess and honours the alchemy of nature. Life and death do not exist without each other, just as fire produces both ash and smoke, one falling to the ground, the other rising into space.
Poetry
Reminders on the Path
Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2021.
Publisher’s Synopsis
Seven years after the publication of Firesmoke, Sheniz Janmohamed returns with her third collection of poetry, Reminders on the Path. The poet is wayfarer, exploring the path we inherit and seek out, that disappears with every step we take on it. At each step, there are reminders rooted in the ephemeral and the indelible. A companion on the path, a fleeting memory, a broken twig–all serve as guideposts to cross the threshold of one’s self. Grounded in the language of place, these poems become stepping-stones from the author’s past to the present, from forgetfulness to remembrance, and from the unknowing to a deep knowing only found through direct experience.