There are so many different little essays I want to write, and nowhere in sight the time and energy to write them. So many stories, too. Novels that bloom and die in my mind, or linger like ghosts.
I don’t have the means to pursue them right now, and I mourn that. Between my job, my work as a writer, and being a father of an infant—which means being sick roughly every two weeks—I can’t manage much more than this brief list of updates.
I hope you’re all well amidst this global worsening, and may we all find whatever way we can to fight the tide & make something, anything better.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
I have a new poem, “Some Joys (Or, Proof I’m Not Dead Yet)” up on Hazlitt, with thanks to poetry editor Billy-Ray Belcourt.
I worked with my partner Hannah recently on a commissioned project for the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, as part of their Radical Care program for long-term patients. It’s not something I’ve thought about before, I must admit; what children with chronic health issues, or long recoveries from difficult surgeries, must go through. How they still have to learn, to socialise, to grow, to have their minds and spirits stimulated. I’m profoundly glad this program and foundation exist. We focus so much on the ugliness in this world, and far too little on the good. This was also the first time Hannah and I have collaborated in our art practice, and I hope not the last.
I performed last week at the NSW Legal Aid’s Civil Law Conference, not my usual audience but some lawyers were apparently at the launch of my book Non-Essential Work, in Bankstown, and came away raving. I say not my usual audience, but several people came to me afterward to confess they loved poetry or were poets themselves. This is one of several reminders the universe has given me recently that you never know what your work is doing in the world, and to trust in it.
I will be appearing at the Blue Mountains Writers Festival in a couple weeks, and teaching a 3hr workshop on poetry. I don’t do workshops all that often, so take advantage of this and sign up. See the program here.
My copy of We Call to the Eye and the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab-Heritage, (ed. by Zeina Hashem Beck and Hala Alyan), finally arrived! It is a gorgeous book full of stunning poems, and only the second anthology of Anglophobe Arab writing I’ve been blessed to be included in, the first being This Arab Is Queer (ed. by Elias Jahshan). To be included among my queer and Arab contemporaries, people I love and admire, is a gift beyond measure. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check these beauties out.
Also this week I’ll be chatting to sydney khoo, whose superb debut YA urban fantasy The Spider and her Demons, has just come out. I loved this book, and highly recommend it. It’s rare to see a Western Sydney writer in genre fiction, and it shouldn’t be. It was goddamn delightful and I hope we see more, from sydney and from others!
It’s not been announced yet so maybe I shouldn’t talk about it buuuuuut… Nah, I better not. There are some cool things coming up I’ll be announcing soon. Stay tuned!
Salaam,
Omar