Trying Again to Stop Time: Selected Poems

by Jalal Barzanji, Sabah A. Salih (Translator), Sabah A. Salih (Foreword by)

Overview

“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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781772120721
Publisher:	The University of Alberta Press
Publication date:	04/15/2015
Series:	Robert Kroetsch Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	148
File size:	982 KB

About the Author

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.
Sabah A. Salih is Professor of English at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

ix Foreword Sabah A. Salih xiii Preface Trying Again to Stop Time (2009) 2 Trying Again to Stop Time 4 A Soulful Sunshine 6 Beauty’s Fault 8 Smart Poems I 11 Winter Is the Season of Grief 15 Home in a Suitcase 18 The Pocket 20 I Didn’t Want to Leave Alone 22 Returning to Autumn I Want To Be Named Home (2007) 24 To Go Back and Back 34 Beyond the Sky Is a Blue Window 36 A Woman Befriends Darkness 37 To Be Free and Lonely 39 Even Autumn Had No Room In Memory of a Person Swept By the Wind (2006) 42 In Memory of a Person Swept By the Wind 43 A Terrible Morning 44 Too Late for Watching the Sunset 45 The Last Refuge 49 Smart Poems II The Rain of Compassion (2002) 52 War 53 Hello Exile 55 Life Coming to an End 56 Nature’s Playground 57 The Fallen Doves 58 The Rain of Compassion 60 Untitled 61 The Sun Ignores My Boat No Warmth (1985) 68 Keeping to Oneself 69 Midlife 70 My Heart and Water 71 Shouting at the World 72 The End of Conflicts 73 An Old Desire 74 The Shade’s Wound 75 Water’s Limitation 76 Before Leaving 77 The Most Depressing Time 78 The Wind of Exile 79 Winter’s Response 80 Burial 81 A Lonely Flower 82 The Shrine 83 To Be Naked Again 84 After the Storm 85 His Soul Returned to Us 86 The Anthem of Departure The Evening Snow Dance (1979) 88 A View 89 An Accident 90 That Evening 91 The Immortal Lorca 92 A Poet and a Suitcase 93 The Lantern 94 No Return 95 A Legend 96 Returning 97 A New Cloud 98 Always Anxious 99 Our Breakup 100 The Shade 101 To Be Surrounded 102 To Love 104 A Visit 105 Having No Need for Fire 106 The Evening Snow Dance 107 The Meadow 108 The Fish Eagle 109 The Dance of the Waves 110 That Tree 111 Your Heart 112 Any Time You Come 113 The Death of a Poet 114 The Kindness of Trees 115 Separation 116 A Layer of Dust 117 Falling in Love New Poems (2012–) 120 Where Am I? 121 The Shadow of a Wall 123 Together, Alone 125 Glossary 127 Acknowledgements