CONTRIBUTORS

Omar Sakr

Omar Sakr is the acclaimed author of three poetry collections, including The Lost Arabs (UQP), which won the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry, and a novel, Son of Sin (Affirm Press). His new book, Non-Essential Work (UQP), is out now.

http://omarsakr.com/

Self-Care

Another death, another love shed into earth, my old body made nude again, a hairy burn in the crowd of unknowable family. My wife and son are behind the rock mound we all plunder to give to the body its …

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

A Muslim, Christmas

The streets are empty-ish. Ish is for my body, the faithless and lonely. I head toward departure. Long one-eyed spectres hunch over the earth and each tree has around it a darker deeper life. Few shops are open: solitary yellows …

Posted in 101: NO THEME 10 | Tagged

Love Under Capitalism

The new joint around the corner keeps changing its name. I get it. I am afraid of growing old. I can’t afford this face for long, this place for long. I still invite people in. The barista wants to know …

Posted in 94: BAYT | Tagged

Landscaping

The grass loops long outside my window. Sags into itself. A thousand lithe men bowing in one direction, a lone sunflower here & there draped over their knees. Little slut. I forget to cut them down. It is winter now …

Posted in 82: LAND | Tagged

Brothers

My cousin the farmer is laden with death he tells me each morning he checks the chickens while I sleep. The weaklings need killing, so he walks amongst them, dawn-spectre, and takes their lives. It has to be done he …

Posted in 80: NO THEME VI | Tagged

NO THEME V Editorial

I must admit that I ventured – no, sauntered – into this guest editing position on feet of clouds. Such a fantastic opportunity to peek behind the curtains of one of Australia’s best and most prolific poetry publications was not to be missed, I thought. In fact, it seemed almost too good to be true.

Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged ,

6 Poems by Najwan Darwish

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Najwan Darwish has been hailed by the New York Times Book Review as ‘one of the foremost Arabic-language poets of his generation’. Nothing More to Lose, superbly translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is his first …

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Submission to Cordite 54: NO THEME V Open!

Poetry for Cordite 54: NO THEME V is guest-edited by Fiona Wright and Omar Sakr. This issue will be a glorious miscellany – no theme, no rules, no agenda, (no pants?) – a beautiful ambiguity. We want all of the …

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Feature Poem with Judith Beveridge: The H Word

There are many levels of identified pain in Omar Sakr’s poem: deprivation, despair, violence, oppression, shame, mortality, the brutal inevitability of loss and disenfranchisement, yet the poem’s interrogation of these issues is often playful and comic, tender and deftly alert …

Posted in GUNCOTTON | Tagged , ,