198x129mm, 92 pages, Paperback
ISBN: 9781914325472 Price: £9.99 Available: October 2024 
I Know Well The Face Of Despair |
I Know Well The Face Of Despair
Hatem Al Shahri A magnificent English language debut for Hatem Al-Shahri, a Saudi poet and literary giant whose award-winning work is already widely celebrated across the Arab world.
In poetry of rage and pain, Hatem Al-Shahri’s despair is directed at Azrael, the angel of Death who
splits the soul from the body. Misunderstood and alone, language is both the poet’s saviour and his unforgiving nemesis. In his poems words become weapons, bullets and arrows intent on creating pain rather than beauty. An elegy and lament for language, this is poetry of isolation and despair. It is language itself that restricts the poet, shutting him out of a sense of joy or access to the sublime. And yet the poet finds an eerie strength, an accommodation and acceptance of mortality in his final bitter desire that language should live on, should be able to acquire a meaning of which he himself feels bereft. |
Hatem Al-Shahri is a writer, tv presenter and literary agent and the author of many works including literary criticism and poetry.
Helen Wing, the editor, is a poet, writer and blogger who has spent the past 15 years living between the UK, China and the Middle East. She is currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. |
