Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her acclaimed memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions in 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released with Radiant Press in April 2023 and in 2022, its title poem won The New Quarterly’s Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Prize. Hollay's short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, is due out with Gordon Hill Press in 2024.
*All images by the Ghadery family.

The emotionally muddy years following the birth of my kids brough many joys but also casualties — long brunches, spontaneous travel, my ability to think or remember with any sort of depth or clarity. One of the many things that disappeared in the wake of those early parenting years was my engagement with poetry. Just when I could have really used it to make sense of my new baffling new reality, I suddenly didn’t have the energy to write or even to read poetry in the same way I had for the whole of my adult life.

BUT. Slowly, slowly, as my children have grown and my life has resettled itself into a new shape, I’ve come back to a poetic engagement with the world. While I may never again be a person who can keep track of everything that is being published and feted and reviewed, individual voices have begun to trickle into my world over the past few years. One of these voices belongs to Hollay Ghadery. Brave, though provoking, often unsettling, her poems takes you deep inside singular moments and experiences, sometimes pushing at the edges of your expectations, and other times exploding them all together. I love Hollay’s work, and I’m so delighted she agreed to give us a peek into her world!

The mug I drink from everyday.

My kids got it for me for Mother’s Day. We love dark humour and, of course, The Golden Girls.

2. The Watchmen’s In the Trees

The Watchmen’s In the Trees reminds me of my twenties. Particularly, my early 20s though the album’s influence extends the whole decade. I was experiencing a rough time in my life—I was an addict, struggling to write, in a tumultuous and continuously heart-breaking relationship, my relationship with my family was strained—and this album echos that fierce uncertainty. The song, “All Uncovered” was (and remains) particularly poignant to my troubled self.

3. Tadhig

Tadhig—which is a Persian dish of rice made crispy at the bottom of a pot. The best tadhig as potatoes too. Oh, and I want it with my dad’s chelo kebab. I remain an infrequent meat eater (for the environment, but I also struggle with it ethically), but if when my dad is cooking Iranian food, I’ll usually eat almost anything.

4. The hours between 11 am and 1 pm

The bustle of the morning is over and the day holds so much potential. I’m also not near the mid-afternoon crash yet or the evening anxiety.

5. My camo jumpsuit

I love this camo jumpsuit, which I picked up second hand a couple years ago. It is ugly, and I am not actually a huge fan of camo print, but it is comfy and fun and so unflattering that trying to look good in it is a distant blip on the radar of possibility. It’s so liberating! And it has pockets!

6. The goats

I’ve loved all my pets—all the cats and dogs (and even, one particularly endearing fish) I’ve been lucky enough to have in my life. But my goats elicit in me a sense of absurdity and playfulness and totally silliness that has helped me through a lot of tough times recently. And goats don’t demand a lot out of me, either, so I can play and love on them for a bit, and they love that, but they’re also good on their own, so I never feel guilty when other things (my dogs, kids, job) drag me away.