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Poetry in Motion: Carolyn Ramzy + Taslīm

In her new collection Taslīm: We Are the Prophets (Mawenzi House), Carolyn Ramzy questions the idea of “taslīm” – commandments for Coptic Christian girls and women in Egypt. Carolyn reads a selection of poems from the book, below.

The cover of Carolyn Ramzy's poetry collection Taslīm, We Are the Prophets: Poems on a Coptic Girlhood. The cover is a photograph of a bedroom, with an ornate quilted headboard and red brocade bedspread, with a wrought iron lamp lit on the bedside table. A framed picture of Christ is centred above the bed.

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Poetry in Motion

More about Taslīm:

These poems by an author of Coptic (Egyptian Christian Orthodox) daughter of immigrants, depict, explore, and question the burden of Taslīm (“Commandments”) on Coptic girls. Taslīm is the “oral transmission of heritage and ancestral knowledge.” The poems highlight the ways in which diaspora Coptic women navigate taslīm or the responsibilities of transmitting ancestral knowledge while reckoning with its costs: deferred joy and pleasure until the afterlife, an almost compulsory notion of motherhood, and a gendered comportment of ascetic and martyr living, even in diaspora. Taslīm in the insecure Christian minority of Egypt became a rigid bind in the immigrant communities abroad.

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A photo of poet Carolyn Ramzy. She is a medium-skin toned Egyptian woman with very curly dark hair that is piled on and around her head, wearing red lipstick and perfectly-applied eyeliner. She rests her chin in her palm and stares into the camera.

Carolyn Ramzy is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at Carleton University. She specializes in Egyptian Coptic Christian music-making, especially by women who defy patriarchal restrictions and move to sing online to navigate questions around gender, sexuality, and diaspora belonging. She lives in Ottawa. 

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Taslīm is available now, here or from your favourite indie bookstore.

For more Poetry in Motion, click here.

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