Step into the crater of East Africa and meet the grain of sand from Sindh. Taste the pearls from Indian Ismaili ginans and attend to the True Guru.

Aglow with postcolonial loss, wryly defiant of what they reveal, the poems in Kabir's Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets describe a warm estrangement and salty gratitude for being on Earth. It's not war-reporting and Ayaz doesn't solve crimes. He doesn't have his head in the lion's mouth. He draws from Kabir's Bijak, Ghalib, and the oral granth and ginan traditions to plot a lifelong and generational immigration.

Ayaz Pirani's profile page

Ayaz Pirani was born in Musoma, Tanzania. He grew up in Canada, where he studied Humanities in Toronto and Montreal, and studied Fine Arts at Vermont College. He spends time between Canada and California. His first book is Happy You Are Here.

"Wisdom poetry has seldom seemed as surprising or sly as it does in the hands of Ayaz Pirani." --David Rivard

"The poems in this collection do not wash over you, but rather--like the best of mystical poetry--prod, tingle, knead, and undo. The aphoristic, conceptual, spare, and odd works are written with acute spiritual sight, and they confound and undo orthodoxies and certainties." --Arc Poetry Magazine