Dilruba Ahmed

Biography

Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry, 2020), with poems featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound. Her debut book, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf, 2011), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares. She has taught with Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. 

See Work

POETRY / Summer 2022

Please Scream Inside Your Heart

By Dilruba Ahmed

Please scream / inside your heart: hold / your terror, your errors, your // regrets apart / from those around you.

POETRY / Summer 2022

Kneading

By Dilruba Ahmed

They call it kneading / as in dough or massage, this act // of pawing at my bathrobe / by kittens.

POETRY / Summer 2022

The White Shirt

By Dilruba Ahmed

Sometimes, a teacher proposes / we write about something / insignificant, or a friend requests // that poems and posts not get so  / political.