Ra'ad Abdulqadir Livres

Poetry. Published in Baghdad in 2006, Falcon with Sun Overhead and The Age of Entertainment inspired a new generation of Iraqi poets, charmed by Ra'ad's ability to write tender poems in times of destruction and fury. While many of his peers were writing poems about battlefields and faraway exiles, Ra'ad was looking closer in, at the loneliness of those left behind. Hailed for its cinematic portrait of Iraq under sanctions --the bread queues, busy cemeteries, empty schools, and the impossible departures and returns, Ra'ad's work commemorates the wonders of a city staying still, one blink at a time. EXCEPT FOR THIS UNSEEN THREAD, the first collection of Ra'ad's work in English translation, is comprised of poems selected from both titles, with an introduction by the translator.

Mona Kareem is a stateless poet, born in Kuwait, whose work has been internationally acclaimed for its power and immediacy ever since she published her first collection at the age of 14. This World Poet Series book, translated into English by the poet and translator Sara Elkamel, brings together poems from Kareem's three collections as well as new, unpublished pieces. It centres on themes that recur frequently in Kareem's poetry - exile, estrangement, city life, the journey to womanhood - offering an overview of Kareem's 20-year poetry career, in English, for the first time.