Kim Rashidi’s debut poetry collection, The Moment, is a collage of poetic reflections on life and its many complexities. Rashidi explores key parts of growing up, such as self-identity, love, loss, gender, and the experience of travelling the world. The title holds true throughout the entirety of the collection– each poem captures moments in time that are inexplicit enough to relate to, yet personal enough to come across as snapshots of Rashidi’s soul.

 

The Moment contains pieces that are all relatively short; the quickest ones to read are merely a few lines, while the lengthier ones span across three pages. Like any collection of smaller works, certain poems are more impactful than others. Though some are less clear about their meaning and can be harder to connect to, pieces such as “city eyes” and “limbo” were able to pack a punch. However, the real gems of The Moment are undoubtedly Rashidi’s longer pieces that wax nostalgic about different cities around the world.

 

Rashidi’s poems about travel and getting lost in foreign places capture a kind of wistfulness, as well as a sense of freedom and youth. They are about feeling as if you belong somewhere you have never been before, and about the adventures that stick with you for a lifetime. These works encourage the human effort of “trying to be in the moment,” as Rashidi writes in her titular poem on page 85.

 

Many of the poems included in The Moment do not use artistic or flowery language, and the majority have a loose, unstructured style. Each piece is formatted differently, and throughout the collection, the rules of capitalization are intentionally ignored. In this sense, the collection is reminiscent of other modern poetry books such as Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey and Amanda Lovelace’s The Princess Saves Herself in This One. These factors do not take away from the overall feeling that Rashidi’s collection of poems convey.

While most are written mainly from a single point of view, and while readers will naturally gravitate towards different pieces, the collection as a whole still expresses the beauty that can be found within everyday emotions and commonplace experiences. The Moment reminds us that while life will inevitably and unpredictably throw unfair, difficult situations in our way, the small joys are enough to make it worth living.