Fatima Jafar has been awarded the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, a recognition that took her by surprise. Expressing her gratitude, she said, "I’m grateful. I’m elated. But when I applied, I didn’t think much of it. This all truly came as a surprise." She noted that she received valuable advice to apply to various opportunities while maintaining low expectations.
Read More
This Fellowship will allow Jafar to not only work on her full-length manuscript but also to pursue a project focused on her grandfather's childhood stories from pre-partition India. At 96, her grandfather's narratives have inspired her idea for a poetry manuscript featuring multiple speakers and timelines, rooted in her family's generational narratives. Jafar remarked that the Fellowship enables her to take creative risks: "The Fellowship honestly makes it viable to pivot. To start something new."
Jafar believes poetry has a vital role in preserving memory, stating its responsibility is to "will something into remembrance." While she acknowledges nostalgia's influence on her work, she emphasizes her focus on memory's reconstruction, declaring, "I’m not so interested in what the memory actually was. It’s more about, ‘How did I remember it?’" This exploration of memory's elusiveness fuels her poetry.
Although Jafar recognizes the social aspects of poetry, she also describes it as a solitary pursuit, involving interaction with the blank page and voices from the literary world. Community has been crucial in her development; she recently served as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University after earning her MFA in poetry from Emerson College. Reflecting on her time at Stanford, Jafar remarked that her peers significantly influenced her growth, noting, "The peers I have been surrounded by are just leagues ahead in terms of erudition and intelligence."
Identifying as “scrappy,” Jafar credits Karachi, Pakistan, as the city that profoundly shaped her as a writer, describing it as full of “grit.” She admires the local writers and artists for their candidness and creativity, which she connects to the city's dynamic urban life.
Jafar draws inspiration from the complexities of shared human experiences. Since completing her MFA, her life has become busier, prompting her to write whenever possible. She often captures fragments of ideas rather than composing complete poems in one sitting. This approach, she argues, is evident in the dynamic nature of her writing.
Regarding her revision process, Jafar believes a poem may never truly be finished, expressing a preference for poetry that embraces “agitation” and “evolution.” For her, poetry is about becoming rather than being, with rigid definitions potentially limiting creativity.
She advises emerging poets to "read with a hunger and a vengeance." Currently, she is reading works by Hera Naguib and Jackson Holbert and cites influences such as Lucie Brock-Broido, Aracelis Girmay, Jorie Graham, and C.D. Wright. It's easy to envision Jafar herself becoming a future influence in the poetry community.