Poetry
أزهار في بئر
Not translated into English
Zahir al-Ghafri · 2000
Synopsis
In these prose poems, the poet returns to his past and to the places of his childhood, with pieces entitled “Les herbes du passé” or “Ces années-là”, in which the memory of a green and dreamed island surfaces. He presents himself there as a visitor and a stranger, a “guest of the world”. The poem that gives the collection its title is addressed to a beloved, between the reflection of flowers in a well, the fruits of the night and a poisoned paradise.
Context
The collection appeared in Cologne in 2000, from the al-Jamal press. Hussein Bin Hamza, in al-Majalla in 2024, places this poetry within the prose poem, open to the senses and to the world, in a calm tone that shuns sonorous rhetoric, and quotes the judgement of the poet Amjad Nasser, for whom it grew up in exile. The review Banipal published selected poems in 2004, translated into English by Salih J. Altoma. Iskandar Habash's book of interviews links this collection to the island of childhood.
Who it is for
For discovering modern Omani poetry, without rhyme or metre, in a poet who lived from Baghdad to Malmö.
Prizes and reception
His work received the Kika poetry prize in 2008 and has been translated into Spanish and Chinese, among other languages.
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