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 was born in Tanzania and studied Humanities in Toronto and Montreal. His degree is from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His books include Happy You Are Here, Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets, and Bachelor of Art. His work has recently appeared in ARC Poetry Magazine, The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review, and Guest 16. He lives near Monterey Bay, California.

Ayaz Pirani's profile page

"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