Books
Litanies (Guillemot Press, 2021)
Using Sufi prayers and sacred texts as a starting point, Litanies explores doubt, dissent and dislocation, seeking to replace prayer with poetry.
The cover art is by Rachid Koraichi, from the Rumi series.
ISBN 978-1-913749-18-7 / 36 pages / 210 x 120mm / Printed on Mohawk Superfine with Favini Crush cover and Fedrigoni Cocktail end papers. Pamphlet
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MICHAEL MARKS POETRY AWARD 2022
Reviews
David Wheatley, writing in The Guardian, says:
Sabah has something of Thomas Hardy’s bittersweet dialogue with the divine, his eye for the disappointments and betrayals of love, in what are poems of huge emotional courage. Already well known as an editor, Sabah’s blossoming as a poet is a spectacle to behold.
Seán Hewitt, writing in The Irish Times, says:
Litanies is assured and intricately textured . . . an exciting and auspicious set of poems . . . it is also unusual in its complex and daring politics . . . It has a feel of Rilke, but Sabah’s metaphysics are disillusioned, sometimes violent, sometimes plaintive. These poems unearth uncertainties, and prize them.
Rory Waterman, writing in PN Review, says:
These poems marry their sometimes anguished conviction to an unusual panache for formal and linguistic dexterity . . . Who else is writing like this, now, and with at once such immediacy and breadth of reference? . . . this is a stunning debut, that cliché for once fit for what it describes.
From the Poetry Book Society Bulletin (Spring 2022) :
Poems . . . both finely chosen and wide-ranging, discussing faith, womanhood, shame, anger, and God . . . This is a pamphlet filled with a complexity that refuses easy answers.
Heredity/ASTYNOME
Released as a special limited edition double micro-pamphlet box set, Heredity/ASTYNOME was published in June 2020 under the Legitimate Snack imprint by Broken Sleep Books and sold out immediately. ‘Heredity’ is a long three-part poem exploring intergenerational change and exchange. ‘ASTYNOME’ is a sequence of seven poems voiced as a contemporary re-imagining of the character Cressida. The micro-pamphlets can be made available as a PDF at a small cost for interested readers; use the contact form for enquiries.
Reviews
Declan Ryan, writing in Ambit, says:
Heredity is its best in its accretions of details, its documentary eye . . . [In ASTYNOME] the blending of ultra-contemporary and slightly more formal diction with a trust in a more overheard sort of speech results in lines full of musical charge and affecting directness . . .
Daniel Bennett, writing in Wild Court, says:
If poetry ever had ‘must have’ purchases, then Naush Sabah’s [Heredity/ASTYNOME] proved to be one of these over the summer . . . The two chapbooks of Heredity/ASTYNOME showcase themes of family and love, enacting a reclamation of places and voices. While reading Sabah’s work, I was struck by the essential difference between the ‘poetic’ and poetry. The poetic aspires more than it achieves, and is basically what novelists invoke when they want to be to be taken seriously. Poetry is what Sabah practices: direct and persuasive, where the modes of personal and literary history intersect.