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Afterwardness
A 2019 Poetry Book Society Winter Wild Card. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2019. Ever since her first Carcanet book, In White Ink (1991), Mimi Khalvati has been drawn to the sonnet form. In Afterwardness its pull became irresistible. She has created in this unprogrammatic series, mixing memory, history, daily life, all her intersecting geographies and cultures, a self-portrait in all her moods, anxieties and delights. The sonnet form is stretched in all sorts of fruitful directions. Just as she adapted the ghazal form to English use, here she puts the Petrarchan sonnet to striking, unfamiliar use, widening the possibilities of the form. The poems are rich with Khalvati's personal history, her Iranian origins, her long years in Great Britain. The poems play between cultures, ancestral and acquired.
- GenresPoetry
71 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 21, 2020
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About the author
Mimi Khalvati
21 books5 followersMimi Khalvati was born in Tehran, Iran. She grew up on the Isle of Wight, where she attended boarding school from the age of six, and has lived most of her life in England. She trained at Drama Centre London and has worked as an actor and director in the UK and Iran.
She has published eight collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, including The Weather Wheel, The Meanest Flower, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and, most recently, Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her work has been translated into nine languages and she received a Cholmondeley Award in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and was the Coordinator from 1997–2004. She is a core tutor for the School and has co-edited its three anthologies of new writing published by Enitharmon Press.
She is also a freelance poetry tutor and has worked with arts organisations such as the Arvon Foundation and the South Bank Centre and has taught at universities in the UK, Europe and America.
She has published eight collections of poetry with Carcanet Press, including The Weather Wheel, The Meanest Flower, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and, most recently, Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011, a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her work has been translated into nine languages and she received a Cholmondeley Award in 2006. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and was the Coordinator from 1997–2004. She is a core tutor for the School and has co-edited its three anthologies of new writing published by Enitharmon Press.
She is also a freelance poetry tutor and has worked with arts organisations such as the Arvon Foundation and the South Bank Centre and has taught at universities in the UK, Europe and America.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 11, 2021
Khalvati’s craft skills are amazing. I read several of these poems before I saw the blurb saying she’s drawn to the sonnet form. When the rhymes and enjambment are subtle enough that I don’t immediately notice the verse, I’m impressed. I never did figure out what form of sonnet these are, perhaps a new adaptation by this author. She starts with eight lines that appear to be a Shakespearean sonnet, but ends with two triplets that don’t strictly fit either the Miltonic or Spenserian form.
Khalvati was born in Tehran, entered school on the Isle of Wight at age 6, and has spent most of her life in London. I was especially charmed by some of the first poems that capture the experience of early school and not belonging.
“Questions” is the first poem in the book. She doesn’t say it's the first day of school or mention the teacher, but I immediately felt I was little Mimi in first grade:
“You’re smaller than you were or so you think.
You don’t remember sinking quite so low
on other seats. Something has made you shrink
or else something has made the seatback grow….”
From “Translation,”
“I’ve heard them playing ball in Kacis Square,
children throwing languages in rotation –
their own, a new one, being made aware
as they leap, drop, pick up, catch, of translation,
the concept, long before they learn the word.
They learn translation as a kind of swap –
I’ll give you parandeh, you give me bird….
Khalvati was born in Tehran, entered school on the Isle of Wight at age 6, and has spent most of her life in London. I was especially charmed by some of the first poems that capture the experience of early school and not belonging.
“Questions” is the first poem in the book. She doesn’t say it's the first day of school or mention the teacher, but I immediately felt I was little Mimi in first grade:
“You’re smaller than you were or so you think.
You don’t remember sinking quite so low
on other seats. Something has made you shrink
or else something has made the seatback grow….”
From “Translation,”
“I’ve heard them playing ball in Kacis Square,
children throwing languages in rotation –
their own, a new one, being made aware
as they leap, drop, pick up, catch, of translation,
the concept, long before they learn the word.
They learn translation as a kind of swap –
I’ll give you parandeh, you give me bird….
not-finished
September 18, 2020Dull. This is my second Khalvati (I finished the first) and I thought maybe she would be less boring in another format (sonnets rather than ghazals). Apparently not.
Poetry is insanely personal so don't let this put you off, dear imaginary reader.
Poetry is insanely personal so don't let this put you off, dear imaginary reader.
August 5, 2024
A truly incredible set of poems that circle around themes of reflection, regret and interrogating memories from the perspective you can only get when you’re no longer in them.
I’d definitely be giving this 5* if the rhymes were less iffy. If this was intentional then it went over my head.
I’d definitely be giving this 5* if the rhymes were less iffy. If this was intentional then it went over my head.
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October 6, 2025‘Questions’, ‘The Older Reader’ and ‘Night Writing’ were personal favourites
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews