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Book review: Vancouver poet Hasan Namir celebrates love, joys of same-sex parenthood

Emotional axis of Hasan Namir’s book links his joyous bond with his son and painful, profound bond with his baffled, somewhat homophobic father

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Umbilical Cord

Hasan Namir | Book*Hug Press (Toronto, 2021)

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$20 | 147pp.

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Hasan Namir, the Vancouver author of Umbilical Cord, has racked up an impressive list of honors for a young writer.

A graduate of Simon Fraser University, Namir was awarded the Ying Chen Creative Writing Student Award there. His 2015 novel, God in Pink, was well received, winning the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction and inclusion in the Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books 2015 list.

He is prolific. In addition to his debut novel and the poetry collection under review here, Namir has published an earlier, award-winning collection of poems and a children’s book, as well as script material for the film version of God in Pink. This year, he was chosen by Word Vancouver 2021 as LBGTQ2s+ guest curator.

Namir clearly expects the poems in Umbilical Cord to be read together, not dealt with as stand-alone verses. He was emphatic on this point in a recent interview, where he said: “As a poet, I don’t write separate poems and submit them to magazines individually. Instead, I write each poem, knowing that it’s going to be part of a collection. Hence, before I start writing the poems, I already have the outline, the backbone of my poetic story thought out.”

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His poetic story in Umbilical Cord is centred on the birth and first year of life of his son Malek. Along the way, Namir has much to say about his love for his husband Tarn and his regard for his sister-in-law Kiran, who carried Malek to birth and remains part of their extended family. But the emotional axis of this book links Namir’s joyous bond with his son and his painful but profound bond with his baffled, somewhat homophobic father.

This collection is a heart-felt tribute to love in its many forms. It reflects the author’s courage, even in the face of death threats and insults, in celebrating his loving, chosen family. And that courage must flourish in a world that is still far from accepting same-sex marriages like Hasan and Tarn’s.

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To date, only 31 countries have created legal protection for same-sex couples who want to marry, and right-wing authoritarians around the world still stoke the fires of homophobic bigotry.

In that context, this poet’s testimony is brave and important. Granted, the free verse he uses to deliver that testimony will seem flat to some readers, but it will profoundly move many others.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net

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