Power lifter

Guess who’s the power lifter in the family?

A woman smiles at the camera as she shows off her arms, on which the muscle definition is very clear. She is wearing a sleeveless tank top and has her arms raised by her side as she flexes her biceps.

Poet at work, with dog

Poet at work, with dog.

In a suburban garden a woman sits on cane chair with her feet are up on a plastic table in front of her. A bottle of water and phone are also on the table. The woman has a notebook in her lap. A red dog sits in the lawn next to the table, its attention on the front gate of the property. The grass in the lawn is thick and green and there if a flower acacia (with bright yellow flowers) in the background.

Happy birthday to me!

Hello. I am 44 years old today. Importantly, Nadia got us Oodies for my birthday!

Selfie of a man and a woman each wearing an oodie, which is an oversized blanked hoodie.

Sadly I haven’t gotten around to wearing mine for too long because this has been a lovely, sunny week in Melbourne.

Selfie of a man and a woman on a sunny day. The man is bald, with a salt and pepper beard, and is wearing glasses. The woman has long hair and has put her head on the man's should from behind him. They both have big goofy grins on their faces.

Happy birthday Nadia!

Happy birthday Nadia!

I’m glad we could celebrate the day with flourless orange cake…

Two-thirds of a flourless orange cake that’s decorated with almonds, orange rinds, and creamy frosting.

And with your very first drive-in cinema experience!

Nighttime selfie of me and Nadia, dressed warmly, sitting in the front seats of a parked car.

That too by watching E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which was fun trip down memory lane to the early 1980s :)

The outdoor cinema screen as seen from the front seat of a car that’s parked in a drive-in cinema. The 1980s version of the Universal logo is showing on the screen.

Lifting party 10 at Barbell Babes Brigade

Last year Nadia joined the fantastic Barbell Babes Brigade: a powerlifting training centre run for women, by women.

Not every member joins BBB to compete, of course, so every few months they organise their own ‘lifting party’. This is an event that gives all members an opportunity to come together in front of a hugely supportive audience of trainers, peers, and invited friends and family while they attempt personal-best lifts.

The assembled crowd cheers and celebrates a successful deadlift. Those are Nadia’s upraised arms in the foreground :)

This is the second lifting party that Nadia has participated in (and that I have, therefore, attended) and they’re always so much fun.

Nadia watches someone off camera attempt a deadlift. Nadia is wearing her BBB top with their ‘just strong’ tagline written in large, bold capital letters across the back.

Also, it turns out pigtails are super handy when you’re a strong badass who is lifting heavy weights in her shoulders :)

Nadia warms-up before her squat attempts.

This year Nadia managed a 75kg squat (up from 55kg last year!), 47.5kg bench press, and 65kg deadlift. Click those links (to Nadia’s Instagram account) to watch videos of her doing to those lifts.

If you’re a woman who is interesting in powerlifting and wants to be trained by (and train with) a fantastic bunch of women, I cannot recommend Barbell Babes Brigade enough.

Group photo of the participants at the March 2020 lifting party.

Levels of snuggles with Maggie

Calm morning snuggles with Ameel.

A red dog leans her head on the stomach of a man lying in bed. The man has one of his hands on the dog and is scritching her.

Warm, cozy snuggles on a chilly evening with Ameel.

A red dog is snuggled up next to a man on a sofa. The man has placed a towel on the dog to keep her warm and cozy.

Nadia, when she’s feeling particularly fond of Maggie: “I will kiss her and love her and squeeze her and call her George.”

A woman and a dog are on a sofa. The woman is hugging the dog and the dog has a resigned expression on its face.

To be fair, Maggie is actually okay with Nadia hugging her all the time. It’s having a camera pointed in her face that Maggie isn’t overly fond of. Though she’s kinda used to that now too because she knows nothing bad will come from it :)

Australian Open 2020

It’s January, which means it’s time for our annual Australian Open selfie :)

Selfie of a man and a woman, both wearing sunglasses and straw hats.

This year’s Australian Open was fun. We didn’t wander around too much, but we got excellent seats at Court 3 and stayed there for most of the day. (The joys of getting there early and getting lucky with the day’s schedule of play so that most of the matches you want to watch are all being played on one court.)

A woman crouches low in front of the net on a tennis court while her partner - behind her, at the other end of the court - serves the ball.

One of the doubles matches we got to watch on this court included top-ranked Australian player Ash Barty. The queues to get in just before that match were the longest we’ve seen in a while.

Long queues outside Court 3 at the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Fortunately we’d arrived early enough to watch the match from a nice, shady spot :)

World #1 Ash Barty waits to receive a server from her opponent.

Also, we were sitting just below one of the Hawk-Eye cameras that tracks the ball during play. I only learned today that this ball tracking technology is accurate up to 3.6mm!

A camera mounted to a pole around a tennis court.

Playing tug with with Nadia

Maggie gets super excited when Nadia and I get home from anywhere, and she has different ways of expressing this excitement. Usually she’ll tear out the front door when we open it, run into the yard, grab her rope toy, and want us to play tug with her, like, right, right now. If we’re not too tired, one of us usually will.

Puuuuull!

Celebrating Nadia's numerous 2019 achievements

Nadia does a lot of cool stuff, but she’s not the best at telling the world about it or at celebrating her successes. That’s where I come in :) Going forward, I’m going to write about all the fantastic stuff she gets up to.

To kick things off, here’s some of the fabulousness she’s been up to this year…

Writing

Nadia has had two publications so far this year — one creative, one academic.

August in Lahore

On 13 March ‘August in Lahore’ was published in Issue 4: Performing gender of Not Very Quiet (“a twice yearly online journal for women's poetry”).

Poetic encounters

On 1 May ‘Poetic encounters: Language, sound and poetry’ was published in Issue 9.1: Inhabiting language of Axon (“an international peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the characteristics of creativity and the creative process.”) .

Abstract

Sound is essential to poetry and poetry is an essential element of human language. As a simultaneous trilingual engaged in the study of multilingual poetic expression, I will use the development of my own plurilingual poetic ‘instinct’ to map the location of poetry within and between languages. I argue that poetry does not grow out of language so much as inhabits the basic aural building blocks of language, the potential for it existing always just beneath the surface of speech. This is tested by examining multilingual poetry as well as translations of poetry across languages to see what is lost and what emerges.

Publishing

Nadia isn’t just a publishee, she’s also a publisher.

Australian Multilingual Writing Project

On 6 May Nadia published Issue 2 of the fantastic Australia Multilingual Writing Project (AMWP).

AMWP is the first ever journal of multilingual writing that includes both the text and audio of the pieces published.

This project aims to provide a space to showcase some of the linguistic complexity that resists and persists in Australia today. Multilingual people often engage in what is referred to as ‘code-switching’, which means using two or more languages at the same time in the same piece of communication. Most of the time, this multilingualism is discouraged, seen as demonstrating a lack of proficiency, considered a ‘pollution’ of the dominant language (English), and so on.

This space is different.

Here, multilingual writers can mix their languages with English to their hearts’ content. The work we publish demonstrates the linguistic, aesthetic and creative reach of multilingual writing and seeks to interrupt, enhance, challenge, and generally complicate, the flow of English.

Events

Nadia participated in two events at this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF).

Future of Language

‘Future of Language’ was a “special mini-series collaboration with EWF” in which “four poets explore multilingualism in the many forms it takes”.

Since this was part of EWF’s digital festival, the output wasn’t the usual text and audio publication, but a video. This video was included in a poetry installation launched on 24 June and is also available online.

The Australian Multilingual Writing Project is the creation of Naarm/Melbourne-based writer, editor and academic, Nadia Niaz. In this special mini-series collaboration with EWF, four poets explore multilingualism in the many forms it takes. Delve with them into language as it was, as it is and as it may be in years to come.

Multilingual Writing

‘Multilingual Writing’ was a conversation with Gabriella Munoz in which they discussed “the art and challenges of writing across languages”.

This was part of the National Writers' Conference (“Australia’s largest gathering of emerging writers”) on 22 June.

Poetry performances

Nadia performed her poetry at five events this year.

Black and White

On 23 January she performed at ‘Black and White (Clichés & Expectations: A Rebellion)’, a spoken word event organised as part of ‘Lisa Skye’s Harehole Takeover!’.

We're here, we're queer, and we're not simple caricatures of a lifestyle. We're a diverse group of disparate voices with unique stories and experiences. Screw the boxes seeking to contain us, this is a night to challenge the norm: hetero, homo, gender and anything else binary and boring.

Rapid Fire

On 29 January she was invited to perform at ‘Rapid Fire’.

With over 35 past incarnations under its belt, Rapid Fire is both the longest running spoken word event at the Hare Hole, and its most popular.

[…]

Rapid Fire's recipe for success is simple: give 12 writers 6 minutes each, draw the order from a hat and ensure that nobody goes over time. This formula provides the perfect platform for writers to refine, condense and edit a story, while providing ample time to display their literary brilliance. It is a win for writers and audiences alike.

Love Letters to Feminisms

On 9 March she performed at the Closing Performances of the ‘Love Letters to Feminisms’ series for International Women’s Day 2019.

Love Letters to Feminisms sees Footscray play host to an exciting series of events exploring feminism in its many complicated dimensions. The group exhibition presents selected works from twenty female-identifying artists – all based in Melbourne. They include artists from First Nations backgrounds, refugee and culturally diverse backgrounds, as well as current asylum seekers, newly arrived migrants, LGBTIQ artists and others.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an afternoon of talks, a special session on feminist life drawing, and will culminate in a live performance event at an accessible venue on Saturday 9 March to mark International Women’s Day.

Synthetic Heat

On 17 April she was invited to do a reading at ‘Synthetic Heat Reading Series 2.1’.

Synthetic Heat is an evening of performed poetry, prose, and graphic storytelling. The series centres on nonfiction, which can be understood as writing that is tied closely and referentially to the flesh-world our limbs are entangled in. Or, as Maggie Nelson’s describes it: ‘interesting prose that bears witness to fact, life, and the problematics of having a body in spacetime.’

Co-curated by Melbourne writers and artists Eloise Grills and Ellena Savage, Synthetic Heat throws into relief some of the most invigorating ideas-based lyric storytelling that is emerging from the outside the usual literary establishments.

‘these words’

On 31 May she was commissions to write for ‘these words’, an art exhibition at KINGS.

'these words' considers how artists incorporate language into their practices, challenging the dominance of English in a linguistically diverse country such as Australia. The exhibition explores how language acts as both a unifying force and a barrier; an integral tool for understanding our own culture as well as the culture of others.

Writing accompanying this exhibition is by Nadia Niaz, creator of The Australian Multilingual Writing Project. Nadia is a writer and academic whose work investigates multilingual creative expression, particularly in poetry, the practicalities and politics of translation, and language use among third culture kids and other globally mobile cohorts.

Narrator

One thing most people don’t know about Nadia is that she is also a narrator. She narrates short stories for EscapePod (“the premier science fiction podcast magazine”); PodCastle (“audio performances of fantasy short fiction and all its subgenres, including urban fantasy, slipstream, high fantasy, and dark fantasy”); and Cast of Wonders (“the leading voice in young adult speculative short fiction”).

This year so far two of her narrations have been published (another is in production):

Editor

Finally, Nadia is also an editor. Her biggest editing project this year has been on a major report for a local non-profit.

Lots more to come

But wait, there’s more! We’re only half way through 2019 so stay tuned for more of Nadia’s awesomeness to be featured here :)

Selfie with Nadia from June 2019.

Selfie Sunday

Selfies at a Sunday afternoon birthday with, respectively, Dr Nadia Niaz, Dr Nuzhat Lotia, and Dr Asha Bedar.

Plus one bonus ‘golden light’ selfie at sunset with Nadia :)

Blocking the sun so we can see ourselves in the phone camera.

Happy birthday Nadia!

Another year, another birthday. (Which, of course, is the very definition of an annual day to celebrate your birth.)

#AllSmiles

This year we celebrated Nadia’s birthday with dinner at my sister’s house while watching the men’s cricket world cup.

#ThumbsUp

And we got Nadia to blow out only once scented candle — which she was quite okay with :)

Posing for the photo.

Happy birthday! <3

Also, Bob’s Burgers fans will appreciate that one of the presents I got Nadia this year was this fabulous glow-in-the-dark Kuchi Kopi!

“Nice to see you, Mr Bob.”

Snoozles and cuddles with Maggie

Turns out this often the first thing Nadia sees when she wakes up in the morning :)

First thing I see most mornings. #love #snoozles #mornings #dogsofinstagram #family @ameelkhan — Nadia Niaz on Instagram (Source)

Of course mornings aren’t the only times Maggie and I cuddle on the bed.

And last night. Evening cuddles are important! @ameelkhan #puppylove #cuddles #doggo — Nadia Niaz on Instagram (Source)

If you want more photos of (mostly) Maggie you should definitely follow Nadia on Instagram.

Love Letters To Feminisms

Nadia and I had an excellent time this afternoon at ‘Love Letters to Feminisms: a live performance of feminist texts’. Organised by the Loving Feminist Literature collective, the event featured several writers, poets, academics, and performers who shared their works and the works of other feminists.

The performances were powerful and emotional, and each one resonated strongly with everyone in the room.

Nadia was one of the performers and she read a piece that honoured the Pakistan women’s movement and all they’ve achieved over the last few decades.

Nadia performing at ‘Love Letters of Feminisms’, alongside an Auslan interpreter

Bonus: the event was held at the Bluestone Church Arts Space in Footscray, which a lovely venue that looks great in selfies :)

Selfie in front of the Bluestone Church Arts Space on Hyde Street in Footscray.

Seriously, though, it was a joy to be among so many diverse and enthusiastic feminists in Melbourne. I look forward to attending more of Loving Feminist Literature’s events in the future.

Mango pudding

Nadia adores mangoes. Unfortunately, she’s been allergic to them since her late teens.

I, too, adore mangoes. But, given we been married for over fifteen years, I only rarely have them. So, when I do, I make the most of it :)

This is from Nadia’s Instagram account:

@ameelkhan is unrepentant in his consumption of mango pudding. #nom #dessert #mangopudding (Source)

To which my response was: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯