my grandma, so clean [a poem]
the first in a series: "i was supposed to get married this summer"
Hello friends,
“my grandma, so clean” is the first in a series of poems that I started writing last summer, titled “i was supposed to get married this summer.”
This series was inspired by a wide variety of sources, including what I’ve read online about other Muslim women’s experiences, what I’ve heard directly from friends and family members, as well as my own lived experiences.
While working on this series, I’ve taken many creative liberties, which have lead me to produce a set of fictional poems that aim to encapsulate the complex emotions and dramatic events surrounding broken engagements in the South-Asian Muslim community, an unfortunately common occurrence.
I’m excited to share this work with you all! If this work resonates with you, please let me know in the comments below.
I. S. Bashirah is a multi-award-winning poet and recent alumna of the University of Waterloo. She was awarded the English Society Creative Writing Award for Poetry, as well as an Honourable Mention for the Albert Shaw Poetry Award, at the University of Waterloo Department of English Language and Literature Awards Ceremony in 2023. In 2024, she was also awarded the Albert Shaw Poetry Prize.
This took me back to so many conversations about menstruation that I had with my own Grandmother back in India. How she had to hide her washcloths (Because there wasn't much awareness of sanitary hygiene and no sanitary products available then) while growing up because even the sight of Clean washcloths that were used to soak up the blood was deemed repugnant by the opposite gender and elder women of the household.
As a fellow South Asian woman I feel this poem. So deeply. I was born and raised Hindu and “period” was a bad word with all the connotations that went with it. Thank you for sharing ♥️