Linking to a piece I wrote for ‘Wordgathering’ awhile back:
http://www.wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue46/essays/alshammari.html
Once Upon a Life
My latest collection of prose-poems is a collaboration with a young Kuwaiti artist. Here’s the link on Amazon, available as paperback and as an e-book on Kindle.
The book is also in Kuwait bookstores: Muse Cafe Bookstore (symphony mall) and Jarir Bookstore.
It was fun working with this artist as we never actually met! We went back and forth with sketches and words. The book is mainly about loss, death, time, and our emotions as vulnerable beings navigating the world.
The Arab Edition » Notes on the Flesh / Book Review
The Arab Edition » Notes on the Flesh / Book Review
— Read on thearabedition.com/blog/notes-on-the-flesh-book-review/
A recent review of my book Notes On the Flesh
Malta Book Festival 2017
Books
‘On Love and Loss’ (2015)
Notes on the Flesh (2017)
Literary Madness in British, Postcolonial, and Bedouin Women’s Writing. 2016.
Forget the Words (2016). Dar Kalemat.
The Secret of 50/50 (2017). Dar Kalemat.
Thanks for Leaving.
I haven’t shared much in awhile, but here is a link to my latest piece on self-love, pain, and abandonment.
https://www.mantramood.com/empowerment/2017/10/9/thank-you-for-abandoning-me
Wuthering Heights
Teaching Wuthering Heights this summer. The students loved it! This passage remains my favorite and I read it out to them while they remained still, shocked by the intensity of love. Afterwards we agreed that Catherine left her true love for all the wrong reasons– but we couldn’t decide if that was forgivable.
You teach me now how cruel you’ve been – cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you – they’ll damn you. You loved me – what right had you to leave me? What right – answer me – for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you – Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?
We didn’t get to be together, but we never separated either. And people who don’t understand magic will never feel what it’s like to speak to those we can’t see.
Notes on the Flesh
Time is always there. May you always have it.
