Tiel Aisha Ansari is a Sufi, martial artist, and data analyst living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Fault Lines Poetry, Windfall, Verseweavers, The Lyric, Mascara, and an Everyman's Library anthology, among others. Her poetry has been featured on KBOO, Prairie Home Companion and MiPoRadio and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collection Knocking from Inside is available from Ecstatic Exchange.

Books by Tiel Aisha Ansari:

Other poems on the web by Tiel Aisha Ansari:
"Soul Music"
"Pleistocene Relic"
"Shouting God"
"Prayer Against Drought"

Tiel Aisha Ansari's Blog.

About High-Voltage Lines:

"Dark, mysterious, passionate, unsettling poems, in which God is a strong absence, or God is light through a crack in a ruined wall. This collection suggests that the practice of writing in form could be a spiritual art, and the tiny cracks in a form could let in the light."
—Mary Meriam

"In this cavalcade of formalities, Tiel Aisha Ansari again shows her sure and easy aplomb and serious inspired torpedo into every kind of subject. She runs so easily through various, even arcane, poetic forms with panache, brio and sheer tour de force, a gymnast on a high bar who often makes us gasp at her performance skill and perfect landing. Blessings on this book (yes, I published her first) and both future deep and jocund (Whitman and Wordworth loved that word), insha'Allah, many books to come."
—Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore

"I've waited a very long time for a book of contemporary poems to light a fire under me. I wallow in well-turned forms, and Tiel Aisha Ansari's High-Voltage Lines is picked to the rafters with finely-crafted pantoums, villanelles, rondeaux, sestinas, ghazals, and more. Here is a wellspring of wordplay and wit, a feast of fresh images, a seamless blend of heart and mind, body and spirit. This book will inspire those who write and enjoy formal verse, and enlighten those who cling to the notion that iambic pentameter is passe, and rhyme the province of poetasters."
—David Hedges