Aigerim Tazhi
POET
Aigerim Tazhi is one of the best-known and most remarkable Kazakh poets. Her poems have been published in world literary magazines and translated into various languages. Aigerim is the author of awarded poetry books БОГ-О-СЛОВ (THEO-LOG-IAN) (Musaget, Kazakhstan) and Бумажная кожа/Paper-Thin Skin (Zephyr Press, USA). According to reviews of her poetry, critics noted "Tazhi’s poems have been widely praised as a fresh new voice and for blazing a new direction among the youngest generation of Kazakh poets" and "In Aigerim Tazhi’s poetry, we may find the marvelous that drew us to poetry to begin with".
"Tazhi’s poetry is a music that explores our shared borders as spaces of opportunity, for the possibility of creating “an imagined world: one that absorbs music from the outside, / and will not preserve the borders / of an internal country”."
"Part of what makes this work so compelling is the way that it grapples with the mystery involved in the creative process, namely the act of turning “everyday life into a miracle,” which requires a kind of searching and tuning-in to all frequencies until one finds a clear signal. <…> Tazhi’s poetry is one of a reversal of roles, a depersonalized narrative, built from a heightened observational sense and attunement to the outer world that dramatizes the inner landscape, where phenomenal imagery accrues, where roles, sensations, and images are always changing, metamorphosing, as “the angle of the sun shifts”. <...> For a debut poetry collection, Aigerim Tazhi’s Paper-Thin Skin is a work of stunning originality."
"Aigerim Tazhi’s poetic thinking is laconic, but in a few lines of rhyming or free verse she manages to fit a considerable world. Distinguished at first by sharply noticed material detail, sketching, gesture, this world is turned back to the reader with its own psychological and even metaphysical essence."
"Conversation, prayer, meditation + a fulcrum – sometimes in rhyme, sometimes with assonance. But what is stronger and more dependable is her rhythm. In her poems there is a great deal of room for all the details of time, places and events which are explained simply and confidently without forced pathos and ambiguous innuendoes."
"Aigerim Tazhi is a Kazakh poet whose writings will impress you and move you, a new and exciting voice <…> What matters to Tazhi is the idea of renewal, “… and somewhere everyday life turned into a miracle,” as she puts it in another poem. This is what Tazhi’s poetry does best. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard again and again."
"Tazhi’s poems are strikingly imagistic, her syntax shorn of unnecessary appendages. By steering clear of any narrative thread or conceptual utterance, they seem like pure instants of perception. <…> In Tazhi’s seeringly lucid poems, the reader is made to look at the world around them afresh—a world where artificial borders and nation-states have little relevance."
"…On an imaginary border between Europe and Asia, between the Russian and Kazakh languages, it is as if the author leads us to a world where borders do not exist, where languages and ways of thinking are merged, and the word becomes a conductor into this world."
"…[Tazhi’s] poetry is enjoyable for the pure inventiveness of her images and observations. <...> What she offers us is challenging poetry which verges on mystifying in places, often challenging the reader to puzzle out some of her riddles."
"Aigerim Tazhi, a brilliant young Kazakh poet".
"…she [Aigerim Tazhi] addresses her existence in such an unapologetic manner that her words are an inspiration to those who have been rendered powerless by a big change."