Ivory Night and Pickled Moments: Two New Poetry Collections
Have you read poetry recently? Why not? You need recommendations? OK, I recommend two collections published last year by Konya Shamsrumi—Ivory Night by Ismail Bala and Pickled Moments by Nasiba Babale.
Even though I've been encountering Ismail's poems for two decades now, I was nearly startled by the beauty of many lines in his latest collection. It’s a delectable dish of lyrical sensuality. The poems are replete with warm-blooded verses speaking only the language of love. This collection that unfurls as a duet between two eloquent lovers is alive with the all the senses—visual, tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustatory—bubbling in a broth of longing and desire…. Just get a copy.
As for Nasiba—The Poet of Light—this is her debut collection.
The Poet of Light—proud of her accent and radiant blackness—unfolds a collection alive with expressive diversity, ranging from lofty to mundane themes. The opening section, “Why Not Love?” overflows with passionate love unbounded by time and space, where desire ignites like fire and the beloved is a book to savor. Through vivid metaphors—wining, dancing, rainy-night lovemaking—the poet demands love’s genuine, bubbling outpouring. Then The Price of Homelands drags us to Gaza’s bloodied fields, where schools and homes lie shattered, and a child’s naïve longing for peace and a new homeland speaks haunting truths of trauma, dislocation, and loss.
This is Not a Home, This is Not a Country mourns a land shattered by bombs and fear, yearning for simple joys like tea on balconies free from violence. The poet’s meditative This is Me reflects on language struggles and identity’s tug-of-war. In the final parts, her tempestuous temperament channels rain, lightning, and thunder through reflections on creativity, everyday warmth, the allure of bookstores, and the grave realities of death, grief, and remembrance, painting a lyrical mosaic of life’s profound and tender moments.
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