Sanita Fejzić
[Author Name]
Biography
Sanita Fejzić is a Bosnian-Canadian writer. At the age of seven, she fled the genocide of her Muslim Bosniak people and the Siege of Sarajevo. She lived as a refugee and “Temporary Guest” across three countries in Europe for five years with her mother and brother. Her father, who was stuck in the longest siege of modern history, joined them years later. In 1997, her family moved to Ottawa, Canada, the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people on Turtle Island.
If her childhood was stolen by genocide, forced exile and poverty, it was literature, bandes dessinées (Franco-European comic books) and theatre that saved her spirit. Because of this traumatic start, her interdisciplinary body of work dwells on intergenerational trauma, mother-child relations, the devastating effects of nationalism, neoliberalism and militarism, and the transformative power of eco-socially engaged art. As an androgynous lesbian, and as an ex-social service worker with Ottawa’s shelter system, she approaches her work and aesthetic of being from socialist, eco-feminist and queer lenses. Visit www.sanitafejzic.com for more information.
Poetics Statement
“Poetry responds to the world we live in; the poet explores and exposes the life and death struggles that re/define them. Since we are, at least to a certain extent, linguistic beings, poetry frees us from the cage of rhetoric. It opens the windows of our perception and breaks the walls of our grammar and syntax. Poetry kills the old and makes space for the new.
I write at the end of times with the words I have inherited. This is a time of great social and ecological injustice, unrest, and transition. A change in how we write is called for to reflect our transition into an eco-feminist, queer, posthuman society beyond anthropocentric images and language. I dig and I grope for new words and novel sentences that express more-than-human subjectivity and nonhuman agencies, grounded in attitudes that enhance desires for social and ecological justice. I craft desires of co-belonging.
I dream new selves and alternative futures into becoming through poetry. I sing to the co-flourishing of the living. This song, in order to find its music, asks me to courageously accept past trauma before transforming the compost of the dead into a healing hymn. A poet is a truth teller, a healer, a visionary… and a bit of a trickster. ”
Sample of Poet's Work
Landing
I am old at seven, ancient at thirteen, surrendered
the country of childhood early, my youth
stolen by each border crossed clandestinely.
Our first legal entry as immigrants
aged me by several years, if not decades.
The children of refugees and immigrants
lose a year for each time a parent’s back breaks,
a year per rotten tooth, another for spirits
drained down the kitchen sink,
and another for stunted dreams, strained
hopes for a better future that never arrives, hanging
on the wall like unrecognized university degrees.
Immigrant parents are welcomed into factory lines,
flushed when jobs are exported to China.
They are invited to stand all day long
as minimum wage cashiers and janitors,
work night shifts as security guards,
or on call superintendents. Bienvenued
into retirement homes to wipe, clean
and scrub the bodies of neglected elders,
like they scrub fancy hotel rooms, hoping for a tip.
Our parents, who must enact immigrant gratitude
for the yearly twenty-five cents pay increase.
My parents have little left to give
except their expectations.
I am their hope. This poem
bears the burden of their immigrant hopes.
Refugee mouth
I go to speak
& the dentist interrupts,
asks where I was raised
because my teeth
tell their own story
in a language he is trained to understand.
The black fillings, traces of times past,
tell him I’m from Eastern Europe;
they didn’t spill fluoride in potable water
& my poor teeth are a testament
to the strength of an invisible, impersonal hand.
After all, he said, we don’t choose the water systems that sustains us,
before needling my mouth numb and drilling, drilling, drilling.
What he didn’t see
are the days spent
without water
or toothpaste
fleeing the Siege of Sarajevo
or the years lived on the run
from country to country, refugees
whose mouths craved food and drink,
our saliva-drenched pearls not a priority.
I had my first root canal at ten,
in a dentist’s office whose language
I could not speak or understand.
He handed me a pink toothbrush
after the torturous procedure,
eyes filled with that look of pity
which sealed my lips shut.
Floss and brush as I do,
morning and night,
I cannot wash myself clean
of these memories,
lodged deep in the cavities
of my refugee body,
mouth spilling secrets,
withholding others.