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Poem by Nathalie Handal

Eyewear is pleased to welcome Nathalie Handal (pictured) this Friday. Handal is a poet, writer and playwright. She has directed and is the author of numerous plays, and her collection The Lives of Rain was Shortlisted for The Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/The Pitt Poetry Series.

She is a member of Nibras Theatre Collective and Associate Artist and Development Executive for the production company, The Kazbah Project. I was very pleased to have her in the anthology 100 Poets Against The War - and very glad to be including her at Eyewear, as well.

She is one of the poets currently writing whose work - political and lyrical - seems most needed in this decade, for how it negotiates the way language slinks, sways, slides and shifts between beauty and truth, at once terrible and lithe.

Recently, she co-edited a significant anthology of world poetry from Norton, Language for a New Century, with Tina Chang and Ravi Shankar, which I recommend.


Les Eventails, Portraits of Passion

The shadows of birds fading on a fighter’s back

The undressing of words on an unstamped postcard

The wet swings in the distant park

The jealousy of raindrops on the umbrella of lovers

The laughter of a boy before a bird

The song of two flutes, two swords, two bracelets, two fingers

The stare of a wave before a pearl

The yearning between the legs of a farmer’s wife

The opening of doors closing midday

The sudden howling of our muse - and

les eventails - disturbing the strange guest inside of us.


poem by Nathalie Handal

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