EXCEPT FOR THIS UNSEEN THREAD: SELECTED POEMS by Ra'ad Abdulqadir
£15.00
EXCEPT FOR THIS UNSEEN THREAD: SELECTED POEMS by Ra'ad Abdulqadir
£15.00
Title Except for This Unseen Thread: Selected Poems
Author(s)/Editor(s) Ra'ad Abdulqadir, translated by Mona Kareem
Publisher Ugly Duckling Presse
Pages 144
Dimensions 230 x 443 mm
Format Softcover, letterpress printed cover
Year 2021

A melancholic voice with a prophetic vision.
– Sinan Antoon

Published in Baghdad in 2006, Falcon with Sun Overhead and The Age of Entertainment inspired a new generation of Iraqi poets, charmed by Ra’ad’s ability to write tender poems in times of destruction and fury. While many of his peers were writing poems about battlefields and faraway exiles, Ra’ad was looking closer in, at the loneliness of those left behind. Hailed for its cinematic portrait of Iraq under sanctions—the bread queues, busy cemeteries, empty schools, and the impossible departures and returns, Ra’ad’s work commemorates the wonders of a city staying still, one blink at a time. Except for This Unseen Thread, the first collection of Ra’ad’s work in English translation, is comprised of poems selected from both titles, with an introduction by the translator.

Ra’ad Abdulqadir (1953–2003) is a pioneer of the Iraqi prose poem, the author of five poetry collections, and a lifelong editor of Aqlam, Iraq’s leading literary magazine. Except for This Unseen Thread: Selected Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse), translated by Mona Kareem, is his first collection in English translation.

Mona Kareem is the author of three poetry collections, and most recently, the trilingual chapbook Femme Ghosts (Publication Studio). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and is a Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University. Her translations include Octavia Butler’s Kindred into Arabic (Takween Publishing); Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within (The Operating System), longlisted for the BTBA 2017 awards; and Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s selected poems, Except for This Unseen Thread.

Found in: Ugly Duckling Presse