Cursive Paradise

Kaur Alia Ahmed’s Cursive Paradise asks how a refusal of cogency can lyrically expand perception. They write, “To weigh heavily on something / is to decide its shape,” and throw language into a state of excess. These poems shift and eddy, loop, and undulate, seeking out spaces of desire and onomatopoeic attraction. All the while, Ahmed offers a view of subjectivity and gender made resonant and malleable, insisting on language that is lush with what cannot be contained by the voice or the page. Cursive Paradise is the recipient of the 2021 Carolyn Bush Award. Kaur Alia Ahmed is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. They make glass, video, poems, plays, and tattoos, and are a recent graduate of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Their work has been presented at Entrance Gallery, LTK Enterprises, Alyssa Davis Gallery, Interstate Projects, and Rhizome, and published in Baest Journal, the Poetry Project Newsletter, and BOMB Magazine.