The Wrong Person to Ask

by Marjorie Lotfi

Marjorie Lotfi’s award-winning debut collection is a book of two halves, each a meditation on the idea of home, both the places we start and end up in our lives. 

Spanning a childhood in Iran dislocated by revolution, through years as a young woman in America, to her current home in Scotland, these poems ask what it means to come from somewhere else, what we carry with us when we leave, and how we land in a new place and finally come to rest. 

Winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2021

Winner of the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2024 (Forward Prizes)


Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2024


Poetry Book Society Special Commendation

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2023

About the author

Marjorie Lotfi (b. 1971) is an Iranian-American poet. She was born in New Orleans and brought up in Tehran. She holds a BA in English, a JD in Law and an MSc in Creative Writing. She is the author of The Wrong Person to Ask (Bloodaxe Books, 2023), which won the 2024 Forward Prize for Best First Collection. It was also shortlisted for the Saltire Award for Best Book of Poetry and was one of the winners of the inaugural James Berry Prize and a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her previous pamphlets are The World May Be the Same (Stewed Rhubarb, 2023) and Refuge (Tapsalteerie Press, 2018). She is the co-founder and Director of Open Book, a freelance writer, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

Lotfi was a co-editor of numbers 40 and 41 of New Writing Scotland (2022, 2023).

She lives in Scotland, dividing her time between Edinburgh and Galloway.

Reviews

[Madhuri Palaji · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Wrong Person To Ask by Marjorie Lotfi

A collection of beautiful poems by Marjorie. She lived in Tehran during the time of Iranian Revolution and had to flee Iran with one single suitcase at an hour's notice. She lived in various parts of the US as a refugee.

These poems talk about her personal story. Reading these poems in the current situation felt extremely heart-breaking. Her poems talk about the idea of home, children being dislocated because of war/revolution, being a refugee, living in a new land hoping for a better life, etc. Thank you @bloodaxebooks for sharing the ARC with me. The book will be available for sale from Dec 5, 2023. #bookreview

[Scott Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A stunning, moving, and - I was not expecting this part - informative book of poetry.

In Lotif's poems that make up the first part of the book, I felt the trials and travels of her family, and in dong that, found myself viscerally internalized some of the trials of my own, when they were refugees from a different country, and a different revolution. Then, to my surprise, the poems in the second half made me curious about people and places I'd never heard of, leading me down rabbit holes of their own (the lone apple tree in the Hebrides? Who knew? Lotfi).

A deeply moving and wonderful work.

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique collection - spanning all the places the poet has living and what has made their life. The immigrant story, the family you always carry. So powerful. And the stories in response to other stories, I was thankful for the acknowledgments that gave context to that which I wasn’t familiar.

[Jo Edinburgh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved Part 1. Part 2 good