Omar Sakr



Speak, Joy: Say the Words

I am a working poet. I spend my days in search and celebration of words, a series of sounds I can weld, if I’m lucky, into insights about being human, and I confess it has never been harder to do so.

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Graze in the genocide

My son whose name is radiance Tripped and skinned His little knee. My god the wailing! the wailing in my heart! A blot Of blood, about the size of the sun Or my thumb. It was ages ago. I can …

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Leaving Traces of Us: Queer Coming-of-age in Anne Carsons’s Autobiography of Red

Anne Carson’s debut novel Autobiography of Red a coming-of-age narrative rendered in verse, tracing the life of a red winged boy named Geryon.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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20 Poets, a Free Anthology from Cordite Books

The geographic barriers that can, at times, hinder Australian literature are no longer relevant, and poetry communities around the world must be enlightened by the commanding, demanding and exciting trajectory of contemporary Australian poetics.

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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 …

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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 …

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Introduction to Omar Sakr’s These Wild Houses

Omar Sakr’s These Wild Houses is a complex exploration of identity, an identity exposed in clear yet layered language, a language that takes us to the core of what he has experienced as a ‘queer Muslim Arab Australian from Western Sydney, from a broke and broken family.’

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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.

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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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Judith Beveridge’s Twelve Highlights from 2014

Throughout 2014, Judith Beveridge selected one poem per month to spotlight in Cordite Poetry Review, and she delivered excellent choices … writing a bit to each selection. We have compiled them all here in one article. Enjoy!

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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 …

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