Forlorn Light: Virginia Woolf Found Poems

To write these poems, I select a paragraph from a Woolf novel - The Waves or Mrs. Dalloway - and only use the words from that paragraph to create a poem. I essentially write poems while doing a word search using Virginia Woolf as source material. I don't allow myself to repeat words, add words, or edit the language for tense or any other consideration. These poems are simultaneously defined by both Woolf's choices with language as well as my own. They feel like an homage to this writer I so admire as well as a way of authentically expressing my lived experience.

Nazifa Islam grew up in Novi, Michigan. Her poems and paintings have appeared in publications including Boston Review, Blue Mesa Review, Gulf Coast, Entropy, The Believer, and Beloit Poetry Journal; and her earlier poetry collection Searching for a Pulse (2013) was published by Whitepoint Press. ​ She has long been fascinated by literature that is preoccupied with mental illness and the existential. Writers she admires, identifies with, and who are perpetually influencing her work include Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. She attempts to dissect, examine, and explore the bipolar experience through her writing. To that end, she has been working on both a series of a series of Sylvia Plath found poems in addition to her work with Woolf. ​ Nazifa earned her BA in English at the University of Michigan and her MFA at Oregon State University. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.