My Shadow: 978-1-970020-12-0

Preface This is my first poetry collection in English; and I can’t hide my excitement about it. But since my journey with writing poetry in English is very short, I am a bit nervous, wondering how My Shadow will be received by native English readers who do care about poetry. My passion for English poetry dates back to college days, as I specialized in English. I enjoyed reading, inter alia, Arthurian stories, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s sonnets (and of course his plays), and the romantics, as well as the modernists and poets of our time. In the last six or seven years, I have practiced literary translation, particularly focusing on contemporary poetry to share my passion with Arab readers who are unable to read and appreciate poetry in a foreign language. The fruit of this effort was six collections of translated poetry. In addition, hundreds of poems that I translated into Arabic appeared in both print and online Arabic journals, magazines, and newspaper. I also translated Arabic poetry into English and shared it through social media, literary magazines, anthologies, and a score of collections and chapbooks. Among these I included some of my own poems that I had written In Arabic and translated into English. But, until recently, I had only written three or four short poems in English, which, along with a few others translated from Arabic, were published in Southern Quarterly, Life and Legends, and a number of online poetry magazines. What encouraged me to take writing poetry in English more seriously was a casual encounter that turned out to be much more significant than I had anticipated or even imagined. In mid-September, 2015, I visited the town of Rahovec in Kosovo to participate in Kosovo International Poetry Festival, to which I was invited by poet Fahredin Sheho. And it was there that I met William S. Peters Sr., an African American poet who, at the closing ceremony, was named the Poet Laureate of the Festival and awarded the Golden Grape Award. I was greatly impressed with Peter’s poetry; I also admired his modesty and his simple way of connecting with people – all kinds of people. Therefore, I felt was very happy to find myself sitting beside him in the back seat in the taxi that carried us to Pristina airport, where we eventually parted. I did not make much of this happenstance; I did not think it would mark the beginning of a strong spiritual bond… well, not until a few months later, when William invited me to be a guest of the Year Of The Poet. To be a guest of honor, to be published side by side with accomplished poets from the different corners of the globe – that meant a lot for me. When a month later William cordially invited me to join the assembly of poets who formed the poetry posse, I was simply thrilled. It meant that I, like the other 17 members, would contribute three poems to the monthly anthology, Year Of The Poet. This was very inspiring. It meant that I would have the opportunity to be anthologized in 12 poetry books throughout the year and share my poetry with as many readers as the book could reach. It was then that I began to write more poems in English. My Shadow presents this last part of my journey, combining both my poems translated from Arabic and those directly written in English. Are they different? Perhaps they are, not because of the language, but because each poem is unique in its own right. Each has its own identity, its own character, its own DNA, so to speak. But poetry is poetry no matter what language it is written in. To you dear readers, I humbly present this modest collection. Nizar Sartawi