In our In Focus: Algeria section, launched at the beginning of the month, Algerian novelist Said Khatibi recommends French-Algerian poet Souad Labbize’s collection Enjamber la flaque où se reflète l’enfer, dire le viol (2019).
For a taster of her poetry, you can read five poems from her 2017 collection Brouillons amoureux over at Circumference Mag, translated from the French by Susanna Lang.
The first of these poems reads:
I don’t know what to make
of the reasons to love you
an early season
begins and ends
in the midst of another
we don’t even have to
change our clothes
Read all five poems at Circumference Mag.
This is hopeless love that never traverses to the other end to be received by the other partner, the man. If he is a womanizer, why care about the memories with him? He is there to be cast into oblivion. That’s my brief comment on the five poems I have read.
Ibrahim A. El-Hussari
Professor of Comparative Literature