Bleeding Light

by Sheniz Janmohamed

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.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2010

About the author

Sheniz Janmohamed was born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto) Canada with ancestral ties to Kenya and India. A poet, nature artist and arts educator, Sheniz graduated from the MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph-Humber.

Sheniz has been performing her poetry nationally and internationally for 15 years, including features at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Aga Khan Museum, and Vancouver Writers Fest to name a few.

Her writing has been published in numerous journals including Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, Descant and Canthius. She is a regular contributor for Quill & Quire. She has three collections of poetry, published by Mawenzi House:  Bleeding Light (2010), Firesmoke (2014) and Reminders on the Path (2021). 

Sheniz served as the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus in 2022, and is the founder and facilitator of Owning our Stories, the first writing circle of its kind for South Asian women in Ontario.

www.shenizjanmohamed.com

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for class and wasn't able to probe into this collection carefully, but my overall impression was very positive. Sheniz Janmohamed blends East and West, ancient and modern ideas in her collection of ghazals. Her poems are smooth and elegantly written. The only thing that was slightly problematic, at least for me, was the constant ghazal refrain, which could be either reinforcing or jarring.