Hybrid: “Dedication” by Zia Wang

Notes

The images in the poems “Dedication,” “Accounting,” and “Packing List,” come from the Longue-Pointe Log Book of Carleton University’s Uganda Collection available for download here: https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/longue-pointe-log-book/

The line, “It was war and it was hell,” in the poem “Accounting” is a condensed version of comments hockey player Phil Esposito made about the Summit Series 72: https://www.hhof.com/hockeypedia/summitseries.html

The lines, “It was about hockey supremacy/between hockey superpowers” in the poem “Accounting” come from this article about the winning goal of the Summit Series 72: https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/article/why-paul-hendersons-winner-in-1972-is-canadas-most-iconic-sports-moment/

The story about asylum negotiations confused by the hockey score of the Summit Series 72 and the quote “Splendid” by Aga Khan IV in the poems “Accounting” and “Dedication,” come from this account in the book Faith and World: Contemporary Ismaili Social and Political Thought by Mohameed N. Miraly, and described again in an article by Rahim Mohammed available here: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/fr/magazines/mars-2017/a-brief-history-of-the-ismailis-in-canada/

About Zia Wang

Zia Wang (she/her) is Indian American and part of the third generation of her family from East Africa. She completed her undergraduate degree in English at Princeton University and her medical degree at NYU. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Drunken Boat, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her work was also selected as a runner-up in the New Orleans Review Poetry Contest 2023. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her husband, two daughters and an orange cat.