{"id":9055,"date":"2018-04-24T17:51:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T21:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/?page_id=9055"},"modified":"2025-04-27T18:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T22:01:15","slug":"ayaz-pirani","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/ayaz-pirani\/","title":{"rendered":"Ayaz Pirani"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Ayaz Pirani was born in Musoma, Tanzania but grew up in Canada. His parents were born in Kenya and Tanzania with ancestral roots in South Asia. He studied humanities and writing at York University’s Coll\u00e8ge Glendon, and at Concordia University in Montreal. Pirani also studied at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He now lives in California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry (Chapbook)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bachelor of Art<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Anstruther Press, 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Happy You are Here<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Washington, DC: The Word Works, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n

Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything \u2014 the clouds in the winter sky, the \u201cfirework\u201d display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This dizzying first collection will startle and delight.Happy You Are Here<\/em> pulls its reader around the globe, plunges us deep into myth, slings us through the almost-unbelievable reality that is life, today, on this planet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How Beautiful People Are<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Guelph: Gordon Hill Press, 2022.
PS8631.I71 H69 2022<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In How Beautiful People Ar<\/em>e, his third collection, Ayaz Pirani continues to write his people\u2019s pothi: a trans-national, inter-generational poetry of post-colonial love and loss animated by the syncretizing figure of Kabir and drawn from the extraordinary diwan of ginan and granth literature. Walking alongside the tiger of Ali and an assortment of beloved infidels, Ayaz uncovers just How Beautiful People Are<\/em>. After all, what will darkness do, his poems ask, when a true guru makes light?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kabir’s Jacket has a Thousand Pockets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2019.
PS8631 .I71 K33 2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n

Ma misses the sun, warmth and colors of their faraway homeland, but her daughter sees magic in everything \u2014 the clouds in the winter sky, the \u201cfirework\u201d display when she throws an armful of snow into the air, making snow angels, tasting snowflakes. And in the end, her joy is contagious. Home is where family is, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Step into the crater of East Africa and meet the grain of sand from Sindh. Eat pearls from Indian Ismaili ginans and attend to the True Guru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aglow with post-colonial loss, wryly defiant of what they are admitting, the poems in Kabir\u2019s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets<\/em> describe a warm estrangement and salty gratitude for being on Earth.  It\u2019s not war-reporting and Ayaz doesn\u2019t solve crimes. He doesn\u2019t have his head in the lion\u2019s mouth. He draws from Kabir\u2019s Bijak, Ghalib, and the oral granth and ginan tradition to plot a lifelong and generational immigration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry (Chapbook)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Martyr’s Garden<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: knife fork book, 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Fiction (Short stories)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Death to America<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Porcupine’s Quill, 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In Ayaz Pirani\u2019s debut collection of stories,\u00a0Death to America<\/em>, he doesn\u2019t try to straighten a dog\u2019s tail. His stories are the frays on Empire\u2019s fringe, and his colored characters navigate a perennially perfidious Albion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With economy and a taste for the oddball\u2019s angle, Ayaz Pirani makes the peculiar quotidian. He draws from Ismaili ginans and granths, and the Indo-Pak heritage of story-telling, oral poetry, and old-fashioned one-liners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ayaz Pirani personal website<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Anstruther Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Gordon Hill Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Mawenzi House<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Porcupine’s Quill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher The Word Works<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ayaz Pirani was born in Musoma, Tanzania but grew up in Canada. His parents were born in Kenya and Tanzania with ancestral roots in South Asia. He studied humanities and writing at York University’s Coll\u00e8ge Glendon, and at Concordia University … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9055","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9055"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20107,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9055\/revisions\/20107"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}