Trying Again to Stop Time: Selected Poems

by Jalal Barzanji, Sabah A. Salih (Translator), Sabah A. Salih (Foreword by)

Overview

"It’s a losing battle:
my words have no chance against time.
Sometimes,
unable to catch up with imagination,
I leave the battle, candle in hand,
in complete darkness."

— from "Trying Again to Stop Time"

Jalal Barzanji chronicles the path of exile and estrangement from his beloved native Kurdistan to his chosen home in Canada. His poems speak of the tension that exists between the place of one’s birth and an adoptive land, of that delicate dance that happens in the face of censorship and oppression. In defiance of Saddam Hussein’s call for sycophantic political verse, he turns to the natural world to reference a mournful state of loss, longing, alienation, and melancholy. Barzanji’s poetry is infused with the richness of the Middle East, but underlying it all is a close affinity to Western Modernists. In those moments where language and culture collide and co-operate, Barzanji carves out a strong voice of opposition to political oppression. Readers will return to his work again and again, just as viewers return to a favourite painting.

"Like contemporary poets Taslima Nasrin, Adonis, Yehuda Amichai, and Shuntaro Tanikawa, Barzanji’s is a voice in which the native willingly mutates into the global."
— Sabah A. Salih, Translator

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781772120431
Publisher:	University of Alberta Press
Publication date:	02/18/2015
Series:	Robert Kroetsch
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jalal Barzanji is a highly respected Kurdish poet and journalist. He has published seven books of poetry and numerous critical columns. After his two-year imprisonment by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 1980s and further political repression into the 1990s, Barzanji and his family fled to Turkey. They remained there for eleven months, eventually immigrating to Canada. Sabah A. Salih is Professor of English at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

ix Foreword
Sabah A. Salih

xiii Preface

Trying Again to Stop Time (2009)
2 Trying Again to Stop Time
4 A Soulful Sunshine
6 Beauty’s Fault
8 Smart Poems I
11 Winter Is the Season of Grief
15 Home in a Suitcase
18 The Pocket
20 I Didn’t Want to Leave Alone
22 Returning to Autumn

I Want To Be Named Home (2007)
24 To Go Back and Back
34 Beyond the Sky Is a Blue Window
36 A Woman Befriends Darkness
37 To Be Free and Lonely
39 Even Autumn Had No Room

In Memory of a Person Swept By the Wind (2006)
42 In Memory of a Person Swept By the Wind
43 A Terrible Morning
44 Too Late for Watching the Sunset
45 The Last Refuge
49 Smart Poems II

The Rain of Compassion (2002)
52 War
53 Hello Exile
55 Life Coming to an End
56 Nature’s Playground
57 The Fallen Doves
58 The Rain of Compassion
60 Untitled
61 The Sun Ignores My Boat

No Warmth (1985)
68 Keeping to Oneself
69 Midlife
70 My Heart and Water
71 Shouting at the World
72 The End of Conflicts
73 An Old Desire
74 The Shade’s Wound
75 Water’s Limitation
76 Before Leaving
77 The Most Depressing Time
78 The Wind of Exile
79 Winter’s Response
80 Burial
81 A Lonely Flower
82 The Shrine
83 To Be Naked Again
84 After the Storm
85 His Soul Returned to Us
86 The Anthem of Departure

The Evening Snow Dance (1979)
88 A View
89 An Accident
90 That Evening
91 The Immortal Lorca
92 A Poet and a Suitcase
93 The Lantern
94 No Return
95 A Legend
96 Returning
97 A New Cloud
98 Always Anxious
99 Our Breakup
100 The Shade
101 To Be Surrounded
102 To Love
104 A Visit
105 Having No Need for Fire
106 The Evening Snow Dance
107 The Meadow
108 The Fish Eagle
109 The Dance of the Waves
110 That Tree
111 Your Heart
112 Any Time You Come
113 The Death of a Poet
114 The Kindness of Trees
115 Separation
116 A Layer of Dust
117 Falling in Love

New Poems (2012–)
120 Where Am I?
121 The Shadow of a Wall
123 Together, Alone

125 Glossary

127 Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

"...it will be easy for readers to connect with Barzanji's writing, because his words seep with humanity's universal emotions and occurrences."—Safa Jinje, Quill & Quire
On the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Fiction) for the week of May 8, 2015—Edmonton Journal
Today's book of poetry believes that poetry connects us, makes us more human.... Barzanji has been part of an oppressed minority in his own country, an exile, a refugee and an immigrant…. By illuminating his world of exile Barzanji shines a light on the whole world. His poems are witness and journey…. Barzanji has a surprisingly light touch considering the depths he is mining, it surprises the reader again and again.... Jalal Barzanji's story is a familiar one but it is not often shared, rendered into art. These poems shine."—Michael Dennis
"The poetry itself is political, personal and interrogating. It asks questions of governments, of individuals in power and of ourselves as citizens, readers, and artists. While the poems cross boundaries and decades, Barzanji’s work is intensely immediate, while always acknowledging the swift passage of time... Barzanji’s voice is warm, accessible, and occasionally humorous. He does not shy from the seriousness of politics and war, but reminds us that within those larger spheres beats an individual heart, alone or—one would hope—next to another." [Full review at http://arcpoetry.ca/?p=8993]—Kimmy Beach, Arc Poetry Magazine
Nice, intimate, vertical format that works beautifully for the poems, with a simple typographical palette... Benjamin Shaykin, Juror, Association of American University Presses: Book, Jacket, and Journal Show 2016
"The Kurdish question stands tall in our age as yet another emblematic paradigm of the violence enacted on a people in the name of the nation-state. Barzanji’s poetry is lovely, with frequent piercing tender moments and visions of the daily and the ordinary. The translation reads smoothly and naturally, highlighting the spoken quality of the poems, the loving and wounded quality of their speaker." Fady Joudah, translator of Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, winner of the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize

From the Publisher

Nice, intimate, vertical format that works beautifully for the poems, with a simple typographical palette...

Association of American University Presses: Book, Jacket, and Journal Show 2016 - Benjamin Shaykin (juror)