CAIRO: the undelivered letters

CAIRO: the undelivered letters

(Winner of the Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Award, 2022)

Of the poetry, judge Mei-mei Berssenbrugge had the following to say:

These epistolary poems are simply brilliant. The way the depth comes to the surface with such ease certainly points to the poet’s mastery over language. This is also another manuscript in the pile that mixes fine poetry with a great sense of humor.

The poetic “I” takes on different shapes and sounds without losing its focus & the flow of the overall theme & music. Though the poet writes in English, I could also hear the impeccably luscious (as in sweet & appealing) sounds of Arabic between and above the lines.

I also couldn’t help but think of Jack Spicer’s After Lorca, another brilliant book of epistolary poems, while reading this manuscript. And what Spicer says of perfect poetry, that it “has infinitely small vocabulary,” applies to Cairo: the undelivered letters.”

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“This rich and imaginative series of ‘letters to the editor’ is a cracked mirror on the city of Cairo depicted by a demimonde of citizens and the surreal dramatizations of their plights as pleas. The absent editor of the Daily Mail represents a higher authority of truth, hope, justice in the possibility of these ‘true’ stories being published. The poet writes with compassion, strength, humor and flamboyance.”