• The Book of Interruptions

The Book of Interruptions

by Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi

October 7, 2025 | ISBN 978-1-998408-25-2 | 96 Pages

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In The Book of Interruptions Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi has brought together a collection of poems written with scalpel-like precision. Infused with “pre-emptive violence” these poems mark the intersection of war, immigration, sexuality and history, with lines often placed at the crossroads of Perso-Islamic and Western thought. Moving between an Iran that is marked with “tulips from the martyr’s blood” and Toronto, a city that is always screaming but where the author is a “ghost, anecdotal,” Mohammadi writes unflinchingly of the reality that faces them and others like them who straddle two worlds. But within this fierce collection there is also room for art, and for pleasure, and for words that invite us all with “gentle patterns of light against light against light.”

Advance Praise

“Among young diasporic poets working in Canada, very few evince as deep an engagement as Khashayar Mohammadi with the philosophy, literary criticism and poetry of their inherited language and its cultural traditions while insisting as rigorously on asking, how does this inheritance equip the poet to confront and survive the present? Carried in the body, contrasted with devastating state violence in post-revolutionary Iran, are the luminous ideals of the Persianate tradition worth the emotional toll of their freight? Alternating with the poet’s intimately confessional voice, The Book of Interruptions reads like a series of invocations against the collective political dangers of nostalgia and forgetting.” – Rahat Kurd, author of The Book of Z

Events with Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi

  • 116. Don't Revisit Scrapped Poems w/ Kashayar "Kess" Mohammadi (Andrew French, Page Fright: A Poetry Podcast, 12-Mar-2026)
    Kashayar "Kess" Mohammadi drops by to talk their latest poetry collection, The Book of Interruptions. Andrew asks about bringing new life to old poems. It's a blast!

    • The Book of Interruptions (Hollay Ghadery, New Books Network, 9-Feb-2026)
      In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi about their new poetry collection, The Book of Interruptions.
    • Poetry Panel: On Crafting Collections, Mentorship, and Finding Your Readers (Rhonda Douglas, the Resilient Writers Radio Show, 09/25/2025)
      In this special episode of the Resilient Writers Radio Show, Rhonda Douglas hosts a poetry panel featuring four accomplished poets: Kess Mohammadi, Guy Elston, Lorne Daniel, and Melissa Powless Day.

  • Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (they/them) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator. They are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Award and the author of nine chapbooks of poetry. The Book of Interruptions is their fifth poetry book.