Description
“It’s a losing battle:
my words have no chance against time.
Sometimes,
unable to catch up with imagination,
I leave the battle, candle in hand,
in complete darkness.”
— from “Trying Again to Stop Time"
Jalal Barzanji chronicles the path of exile and estrangement from his beloved native Kurdistan to his chosen home in Canada. His poems speak of the tension that exists between the place of one’s birth and an adoptive land, of that delicate dance that happens in the face of censorship and oppression. In defiance of Saddam Hussein’s call for sycophantic political verse, he turns to the natural world to reference a mournful state of loss, longing, alienation, and melancholy. Barzanji’s poetry is infused with the richness of the Middle East, but underlying it all is a close affinity to Western Modernists. In those moments where language and culture collide and co-operate, Barzanji carves out a strong voice of opposition to political oppression. Readers will return to his work again and again, just as viewers return to a favourite painting.
“Like contemporary poets Taslima Nasrin, Adonis, Yehuda Amichai, and Shuntaro Tanikawa, Barzanji’s is a voice in which the native willingly mutates into the global.”
— Sabah A. Salih, Translator
“The Kurdish question stands tall in our age as yet another emblematic paradigm of the violence enacted on a people in the name of the nation-state. Barzanji’s poetry is lovely, with frequent piercing tender moments and visions of the daily and the ordinary. The translation reads smoothly and naturally, highlighting the spoken quality of the poems, the loving and wounded quality of their speaker.”
— Fady Joudah, translator of Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, winner of the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Reviews
Nice, intimate, vertical format that works beautifully for the poems, with a simple typographical palette... Benjamin Shaykin, Juror, Association of American University Presses: Book, Jacket, and Journal Show 2016
On the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Fiction) for the week of May 8, 2015
- Edmonton Journal
Today's book of poetry believes that poetry connects us, makes us more human.... Barzanji has been part of an oppressed minority in his own country, an exile, a refugee and an immigrant…. By illuminating his world of exile Barzanji shines a light on the whole world. His poems are witness and journey…. Barzanji has a surprisingly light touch considering the depths he is mining, it surprises the reader again and again.... Jalal Barzanji's story is a familiar one but it is not often shared, rendered into art. These poems shine."
- Michael Dennis
"The poetry itself is political, personal and interrogating. It asks questions of governments, of individuals in power and of ourselves as citizens, readers, and artists. While the poems cross boundaries and decades, Barzanji’s work is intensely immediate, while always acknowledging the swift passage of time... Barzanji’s voice is warm, accessible, and occasionally humorous. He does not shy from the seriousness of politics and war, but reminds us that within those larger spheres beats an individual heart, alone or—one would hope—next to another." [Full review at http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=8993]
- Kimmy Beach
"...it will be easy for readers to connect with Barzanji's writing, because his words seep with humanity's universal emotions and occurrences."
- Safa Jinje