Ebook120 pages46 minutes
Trying Again to Stop Time: Selected Poems
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
()
About this ebook
“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
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
Author
Jalal Barzanji
Jalal Barzanji is a highly respected Kurdish poet and journalist. He has published seven books of poetry and numerous critical columns. After his two-year imprisonment by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 1980s and further political repression into the 1990s, Barzanji and his family fled to Turkey. They remained there for eleven months, eventually immigrating to Canada.
Related to Trying Again to Stop Time
Related ebooks
The Man in Blue Pyjamas: A Prison Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Monkey at the Window: Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpace Between Her Lips: The Poetry of Margaret Christakos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaterwalk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDisengaged Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTanpinar's Five Cities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Saviour of Lasnamäe Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Comprehensive Anthology of Early 21st Century Arab Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Chestnut Horses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA God at the Door Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIraqi Americans: The Lives of the Artists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSand in the Castle: A Collection of Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust Peace: Orthodox Perspectives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImmigrant Blues Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5B (After Dante) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoon Brow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Los Angeles Review No. 23 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets: A Modern Arabic Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Old Man and His Sons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlackbird, Bye Bye Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA True Lie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Early Departure: 70 Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoetry Book Society Winter 2018 Bulletin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of Mar Yahballaha and Rabban Sauma: Edited, translated, and annotated by Pier Giorgio Borbone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNegative Space Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Luck is the Hook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Virgin Lands: Two Years in Kazakhstan, 1954-5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLooking from the Precipice: Reflections from Nazareth of a Palestinian Christian Evangelical Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rumi: The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tradition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Trying Again to Stop Time
Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Trying Again to Stop Time - Jalal Barzanji
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1