Hajjar Baban : Low Flying Planes
episode
Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry
2h 20m
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is Hajjar Baban and what is her debut collection *Low Flying Planes* about?
Today's episode is brought to you by Red Nun Collective, a new nonprofit literary endeavor that publishes books, follies, and ephemera. Co-founded by friends Mary Kim Arnold, Kate Colby, and Darcy Denigan out of Providence, Rhode Island. Red Nun says they want to die on a hill of books. Their first title is Shrine, a novella by V.H. Wildman about the Idiosyncratic and elusive artist Paul Theck, whose sculptures and installations were not made to last. In her introduction, Rosemary Waldrup says that Shrine is an extraordinary book that fuses documentation and fiction in an unusual homage to an unusual artist. Rednun's mission is to collaborate with artists and writers who attend to the Possibilities of language, and they've commissioned four works for 2027, including a book-length essay on Arab poetics called Saba from Brandon Shimoda and Dot Devoda, a prose piece called Wealthy White Women by Evelyn Hampton, new poems by Farnush Fatih, and an experimental music text score by Bonnie Han Jones.
Visit rednuncollective.org to follow and support their work. Today's episode is also brought to you by Exhibit G, Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza by Fatih Judah. From a National Book Award finalist comes a collection of poems, essays, and photographs that offers a Palestinian representation of the unwavering resilience and prevailing life force of a people and place enduring genocide. Writing from the split perspective of a Palestinian American physician caring for the sick while watching the destruction of Gaza from the United States, Judah presses his reader to comprehend the experience of both the individual and the whole, centering dignity, tenderness and resilience with photographs from the Gaza soup kitchen, exhibiting the
Exhibit G insists on Gaza as a living community rather than the abstraction of suffering. Exhibit G is available for preorder now at milkweed.org. One of the great pleasures of engaging with a debut poetry collection is that sometimes you're lucky enough to encounter a voice that is not only new, but also that feels like it has such a distinct gravitational pull that you imagine it will join whatever forces shape poetry going forward in the years to come. That perhaps looking back a decade from now, people will remark. how you talked to that poet way back when. I felt this in reading the poetry of today's guest, Hajar Baban. Of course every poet, even ones who seem to arrive fully formed, has their influences and place themselves within writing lineages, and we talk about several today for Hajjar, from the Kurdish poet Shirko Bekas to the poetry of Paul Salon, who
But one poet whose influence on Hadger we don't explore in today's conversation is that of Eugene Gilvik. I'm happy that for the bonus audio archive, she decides to engage directly with the work of Gilvik because within her poetry collection she makes explicit nods towards his work just as she does with Becas and Salon. But unlike the work of Salon, Giedilvick's not as well known, but should be, and when you hear her read Giedelvik, it will deepen your understanding of Hodger's work too. Not to mention that, much like Eleni Sekelianos' recent electrifying reading for the bonus audio from HD's trilogy, I was left wondering after listening to Hodger speak about how she was. Came to Gilvik's work and its importance to her, why I haven't been reading him all this time, and eager to make up for lost time with both HD and Gilvik.
Hodger's extended reading of his work for us joined so many other great bonus readings, whether Jen Bervin reading from Paul Salon's letters, then talking about his influence, and then reading a poem. poem written under his influence, Rabbi Alamadin reading and talking about Pessoa, Jory Graham reading Creeley and Edward Thomas, Omar El Akkad reading Jory Graham, Ross Gay reading Jean Valentine, Richard Powers reading W. S. Merwin. Or Madeleine Tien reading a Gareth Evans poem that Evans wrote for John Berger, Hold Everything Dear. This only scratches the surface of all there is to explore in the bonus audio, which itself is only one of many things to choose from.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Hajjar Baban and what is her debut collection *Low Flying Planes* about?
0:00–21:24
2
How does the opening Bekas poem frame the themes of silence and forsakenness in the book?
21:24–39:34
3
What role does language—Dari, Arabic, Kurdish—play in Baban’s family history and poetic voice?
39:34–54:54
4
How does the Kurdish Poets Collective shape Baban’s sense of community and identity?
54:54–1:10:32
5
Why are rocks a recurring motif and how do they connect to memory, homeland, and violence?
1:10:32–1:28:55
6
What is the “low‑flying‑plane” form and how does it create a sense of levity and resistance?
1:28:55–1:42:26
7
How does Baban use repetition and the “Arabic” form to confront colonizing language structures?
1:42:26–1:59:35
8
What final reflections does Baban offer on silence, isolation, and the future of her poetry?
1:59:35–2:19:13