Marjorie Lotfi reviews, interviews & poem features
Winner of the James Berry Poetry Prize 2021
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2024
Shortlisted for Poetry Book of the Year (Saltire Book Awards 2024)
‘The Wrong Person to Ask is as precise as it is dynamic; every line is exact, and each image carefully sculpted.’ – Forward Prize co-judge Alycia Pirmohamed
'An assured collection delivering a powerful punch in its first pages, later positing Scotland as a safe place of healing.' – Judges' comment, Poetry Book of the Year (Saltire Book Awards 2024)
Marjorie Lotfi's first book-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask, was published by Bloodaxe in October 2023. It was a joint winner of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. It won the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2024, one of the Forward Prizes, and was shortlisted for Poetry Book of the Year in the Saltire Book Awards 2024.
Marjorie took part in the James Berry Prize Winners' event on 9 November 2023 in Newcastle - scroll down to watch the video.
The Wrong Person to Ask is a book of two halves, each a meditation on the idea of home, both the places we start and end up in our lives. Spanning a childhood in Iran dislocated by revolution, through years as a young woman in America, to Marjorie Lotfi's current home in Scotland, these poems ask what it means to come from somewhere else, what we carry with us when we leave, and how we land in a new place and finally come to rest.
Marjorie Lotfi was born in New Orleans, moved to Tehran as a baby with her American mother and Persian father, and fled Iran at hour's notice during the Iranian Revolution. She lived in different parts of the US before settling in the UK in 1999, and in Scotland in 2005. She now lives in Edinburgh. In June 2024 she was named one of the ten writers chosen for ILX10: Rising Stars of UK Writing, a selection of ten early-career writers based in the UK whose work has the potential to speak to and engage with global literary audiences. The International Literature Exchange is a programme from National Centre for Writing, Norwich.
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From July 2024 to March 2025, Norfolk Library Service and Creative Arts East are partnering on a programme that celebrates Norfolk’s multiculturalism and raises awareness of the county as a place of welcome and sanctuary. This includes a collaboration with the National Centre for Writing to commission Bloodaxe poets George Szirtes and Marjorie Lotfi to write a poem on the themes of welcome and sanctuary. The poems have been translated into five languages: Arabic, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese and Ukranian. Both written and audio versions, with recordings by the poets themselves and by the translators, are available here.
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Marjorie Lotfi's poem 'Packing for America' from The Wrong Person to Ask was featured on Poems on the Underground posters in London Underground and Overground trains during March 2024.
See the poster here: https://poemsontheunderground.org/packing-for-america-by-marjorie-lotfi
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REVIEW COVERAGE
Morning Star, Friday 13 December 2024
Marjorie Lotfi’s Forward Prize for Best First Collection-winning debut The Wrong Person to Ask was well reviewed in the Morning Star of 13 December 2024.
‘The question of any exile — where is home? — is a theme running through the whole collection.’ – Ruth Aylett, Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/war-and-homeland
BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2024 FEATURE
Church Times, ‘Festive’ favourite books of 2024, Friday 29 November 2024
Marjorie Lotfi’s 2023 debut collection The Wrong Person to Ask was chosen by Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, as his book of the year for the Church Times’s favourite books feature of 29 November 2024.
'...my stand-out book of the year is Marjorie Lotfi’s award-winning debut collection of poems, The Wrong Person to Ask. [...] Shaped by her migrations from Iran to America to Scotland, her poems are meditations on the themes of exile, refuge, memory, place, and the pressing grip of what has gone. They are beautiful.' – Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, Church Times (Books of the Year 2024)
In print and online. Four articles per month are available for free to non-subscribers.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2024/29-november/features/features/festive-favourite-books-of-2024
FORWARD PRIZES 2024
The Wrong Person to Ask was announced as winner of the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection at the Forward Prizes Ceremony and readings at Gala Theatre in Durham on 10 October 2024.
‘The Wrong Person to Ask by Marjorie Lotfi moves effortlessly across time and space to revisit experiences of displacement and exile during the Iranian revolution. It also examines the contours of her current home in Scotland through meditations and memories of family and migration. Knowingly, tenderly, and not without pain, these poems are reflections on place and the complicated feelings that accompany leaving a place and arriving elsewhere. The Wrong Person to Ask is as precise as it is dynamic; every line is exact, and each image carefully sculpted.’ – Forward Prize co-judge Alycia Pirmohamed, introducing Marjorie Lotfi's debut collection at the Forward Prize Ceremony.
An interview with Marjorie Lotfi is on the Forward Prize website here.
The Poetry School invited Marjorie to write about a poem from her debut collection for their Forward Prizes 2024 ‘How I Did It’ series. Marjorie wrote about ‘Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)’, which Carol Rumens had previously featured as Poem of the Week in The Guardian on 4 December 2023. The poem was featured in full, along with the photograph which inspired it, and Marjorie’s comments about writing the poem. Online 2 October 2024.
https://poetryschool.com/theblog/marjorie-lotfi-how-i-did-it-the-wrong-person-to-ask/
PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH MARJORIE LOTFI
Lantern Scottish Poetry Podcast: Episode 8: Marjorie Lotfi & Gerda Stevenson, 18 July 2024
Marjorie Lotfi and Gerda Stevenson were guests on episode 8 of the Lantern Scottish Poetry Podcast, which was released on 18 July 2024. They were in conversation with hosts Kathleen Jamie, Scotland’s Makar, and Alistair Heather. Marjorie read and introduced her poems ‘Maman Bozorg’, ‘To the Airport’ and 'The Hebridean Crab Apple' from The Wrong Person to Ask. She also read the late John Burnside's poem 'Prayer', which features at the front of her collection.
Scroll down to Episode 8 of 18 July 2024: Marjorie Lotfi & Gerda Stevenson
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/podcast/lantern-scottish-poetry-hosted-by-kathleen-jamie/
MARJORIE LOTFI AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY & INTERVIEW ON WRITERSMOSAIC
WritersMosaic: What We Leave We Carry: Marjorie Lotfi, online 17 July 2024
A forty-minute autobiographical essay by Marjorie Lotfi went online on the Royal Literary Fund’s WritersMosaic website on 17 July. Narrated by Marjorie Lotfi, with a text version also available. She was talking about growing up in Iran, fleeing to the US, moving to Britain and eventually settling in Scotland.
‘In this episode of What We Leave We Carry, the series that tells true-life stories of migration to the UK, the poet, essayist and memoirist Marjorie Lotfi recalls fleeing Iran as a child in 1978 during the revolution. She and her family made their way to the US. And now she has settled in Scotland where she is celebrated for her poetry.’
https://writersmosaic.org.uk/what-we-leave-we-carry/marjorie-lotfi/
An in-depth interview with Marjorie Lotfi went online on WritersMosaic in June 2024. She was in conversation with historian Colin Grant. Full details below.
https://writersmosaic.org.uk/people/marjorie-lotfi/
WritersMosaic: Marjorie Lotfi, online June 2024
An in-depth audio interview with Marjorie Lotfi went online on the Royal Literary Fund’s WritersMosaic website in June 2024. She was in conversation with historian Colin Grant. They discussed her life, poetry, her memoir in progress, as well as her reading group project Open Book. The interview is available in audio only. Both audio and text versions are available for the extract from her memoir in progress (‘On Waking’) and her poem (‘Leaving Iran’), as well as for an essay by Marjorie Lotfi, ‘On being both (and neither)’.
Over the course of the interview, Marjorie read and introduced her poems ‘On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say’, ‘The Wrong Person to Ask’, ‘The Last Thing’, ‘When They Ask’ and ‘The Hebridean Crab Apple’ from The Wrong Person to Ask. They also discussed her two poems responding to photographs: ‘Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Brurij, Gaza, 2014)’ and ‘Picture of Boy, Looking Away (Gaza, 2015)’.
‘Marjorie Lotfi reflects on her journey towards becoming a writer, from fleeing Iran as a child in 1978 to arriving in Scotland via the USA.’
https://writersmosaic.org.uk/people/marjorie-lotfi/
MARJORIE LOTFI CHOSEN FOR THE ILX 10 RISING STARS PROGRAMME
In June 2024, Marjorie Lotfi was named one of ten writers chosen for the ILX 10: Rising Stars of UK Writing, a selection of early-career writers based in the UK whose work has the potential to speak to and engage with global literary audiences. The International Literature Exchange is a programme run by the National Centre for Writing, Norwich.
https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/ilx10/
A brief interview with Marjorie is included as part of the ILX 10 feature, along with quotes from reviews of her first full poetry collection The Wrong Person to Ask.
https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/ilx10-marjorie-lotfi/
REVIEW COVERAGE
The Alchemy Spoon, Issue 12, June 2024
An excellent review of The Wrong Person to Ask features in the summer 2024 issue of The Alchemy Spoon magazine.
'Marjorie Lofti’s debut collection portrays lives that find themselves, again and again, on the wrong side of history, compelled to preserve their own stories [...] Awarded the James Berry Poetry Prize and a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, the collection of emigration shimmers with ‘what remains’.' – Lesley Sharpe, The Alchemy Spoon
In print only.
New Internationalist, May-June 2024
Marjorie Lotfi’s ‘tender and arresting debut’ The Wrong Person to Ask was well reviewed in the May-June 2024 issue of New Internationalist magazine.
‘The Wrong Person to Ask is a narrative arc of exile and homecoming […] Lotfi’s poetics of compassion challenges us to reconsider the nature of home for the migratory subject, asserting a new concept of belonging that dances between rooting and rootlessness.’ – Orla Polten, New Internationalist
In print. Available online by subscription.
https://newint.org/issues/2024/05/06/debt-which-way-out
Orbis, Issue 207, Spring 2024
'... Lotfi explores turbulence. The poems are sharp, bright and lyrically intense, telling complex tales with clarity [...] In this fine book, a poet who has seen such things up close becomes a powerful speaker for the displaced, the traumatised and the lost.' – David Harmer, Orbis
In print only.
Gutter, Issue 29, Spring 2024
A very warm review of Marjorie Lotfi’s first full collection The Wrong Person to Ask is featured in the Spring 2024 issue of Scotland’s Gutter magazine.
‘Lotfi’s poetry embraces uncertainty, spanning continents and histories, often grounding itself in the wider connections between people and places ... The Wrong Person to Ask challenges us on what we expect from poetry, and poets, in an elegant and unforgettable way.’ — Sean Wai Keung, Gutter
In print only.
REVIEW COVERAGE IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month, Saturday 4 November 2023
Marjorie Lotfi’s The Wrong Person to Ask was given an excellent review in Rebecca Tamás’ November 2023 poetry round-up in The Guardian.
‘Lotfi’s imagistically rich debut collection moves from her childhood in Iran, where her family were uprooted by the revolution, to her youth in America and her current home in Scotland. Lotfi is sensitively attuned to the painful dislocation of self that can come from moving between different nations … Again and again her radiant language turns over the loss of family intimacy and identity caused by political upheaval and violence … Lotfi’s book mourns these losses and separations, while at the same time rendering the possibilities of a capacious, multifaceted sense of belonging: “And what is home if not the choice – / over and over again – to stay?”’ – Rebecca Tamás, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Month)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/03/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
DURA (Dundee University Review of the Arts), online 8 March 2024
Marjorie Lotfi’s first full collection The Wrong Person to Ask was warmly reviewed online in DURA ahead of her appearance at StAnza International Poetry Festival.
‘This debut title comes to terms with displacement and settlement—the tug of the past, linguistic heritages, absence and presence, unbelonging and alienation as much as hospitality and reciprocity between strangers—using the contours of Lotfi and her family’s journeys to put together a collection that is full of heart even as it tackles tough political themes.’ – Gail Low, DURA (Dundee University Review of the Arts)
https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2024/03/08/the-wrong-person-to-ask/
ONLINE POEM OF THE WEEK FEATURE IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Poem of the Week, online Monday 4 December 2023
Carol Rumens featured ‘Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)’ from Marjorie Lotfi’s debut The Wrong Person to Ask in her online Poem of the Week column in The Guardian of 4 December 2023. The poem was reproduced in full, followed by Carol’s perceptive commentary.
‘Marjorie Lotfi’s first full-length collection, The Wrong Person to Ask is a clear-eyed, sometimes productively reticent debut, and was one of three winners of the James Berry Poetry prize… Lotfi is a quiet and faithful witness. There is no self-indulgent introspection. She insists on seeing what she sees.’ – Carol Rumens, The Guardian (Poem of the Week)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/04/poem-of-the-week-from-the-wrong-person-to-ask-by-marjorie-lotfi
ONLINE POEM FEATURE IN BOOKS FROM SCOTLAND
BooksfromScotland, online 23 October 2023
Four powerful poems of migration and home from Marjorie Lotfi’s debut collection The Wrong Person to Ask are featured online in the autumn 2023 issue of BooksfromScotland to mark the book's publication.
The poems featured are ‘Packing for America’, ‘The Last Thing’, ‘Granddaughter, I entered your mother’s house’ and ‘The Hebridean Crab Apple’.
https://booksfromscotland.com/2023/10/the-wrong-person-to-ask/
POEM OF THE WEEK IN THE SCOTSMAN
The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, Saturday 7 October 2023
The title poem from Marjorie Lotfi’s first full-length collection The Wrong Person to Ask was featured as Poem of the Week in The Scotsman Magazine on 7 October 2023.
‘The poems span her childhood in pre-revolutionary Iran, years spent in the United States and her current life in Scotland. With such a globe-spanning personal history there is, inevitably, much questioning of what constitutes home and identity.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, on The Wrong Person to Ask
In print only.
INTERVIEW WITH MARJORIE LOTFI IN THE SKINNY
The Skinny, Books interview, October 2023 issue
A full-page interview with Marjorie Lotfi was featured in the October 2023 issue of The Skinny ahead of publication of her debut collection The Wrong Person to Ask on 19 October. Marjorie moved to the UK in 1999 and settled in Scotland in 2005. She now lives in Edinburgh.
‘Against this backdrop of rigid political boundaries, Lotfi’s collection is also in intimate conversation with the natural world, a relationship which offers new ways of understanding emplacement beyond ideas of nationhood.’ – Andrés Ordorica, The Skinny, on The Wrong Person to Ask
‘Books author Marjorie Lotfi, whose new poetry collection explores ideas of place, home, migration.’
In print and online at The Skinny's website here.
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JAMES BERRY POETRY PRIZE WINNERS' EVENT
James Berry Prize Winners' Reading, Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Thursday 9 November 2023, 7pm
Marjorie Lotfi joined fellow winner Kaycee Hill for this special event at Newcastle University celebrating the winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize. Their readings were followed by a Q&A hosted by Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley and poet and director of the Newcastle Poetry Festival Theresa Muñoz.
The James Berry Poetry Prize is the UK’s first poetry prize offering both expert mentoring and book publication for young or emerging poets of colour. Organised by NCLA with Bloodaxe Books, and supported by special funding from Arts Council England, the prize was launched in April 2021. Marjorie Lotfi and Kaycee Hill won the inaugural prize in 2021 jointly with Yvette Siegert, whose debut will be published by Bloodaxe in 2026.
Marjorie Lotfi reads from The Wrong Person to Ask at Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts
Marjorie read from her new collection at this launch event in November 2023, celebrating the winners of the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize.
For details of Marjorie's forthcoming events, see: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/events?articleid=1290
[11 October 2023]
