The Poetry of Ali Znaidi

Recently two students in my Introduction to Creative Writing, Poetry class reviewed Tunisian poet Ali Znaidi's chapbooks.  Tonight I'd like to post some of Ali's poems so that you may read them for yourself.  He, by the way, writes in English.

The Poems:

there ain’t such a metaphor

everything is an image

everything is a gallery

but why on earth

there ain’t such a metaphor

that blends the body of a scorpion

w/ the grains

of barely?

words are not dead

this isn’t nonsense

this isn’t detour

this isn’t deviation

this is just dawn that smashes darkness

into an ethereal light

this is just a neon red light of the streetlamps

this is just a doorway asking me to write

my own sighs

all that glitters is worthy of words

all that is dim is worthy of experimentation

Feminine Blues

a dolphin w/

a hydrated skin

on the screen

of the  plasma TV

those girls in

the beauty salon

start sighing

Older Tweets I Didn’t Tweet

A schemata of the hummingbird’s snorting.

—I begin to compete w/ fetishized voices.

An echo of the consummated sounds

of a migratory thunder.

—I begin to lament this melancholic existence.

A butterfly has landed on my frigid fingertip.

—I need to mend the broken strings of the violin.

map of a dream

a stone that would cover

a ditch

as foundation would cover

the dark spots on a face

let the colours wade into

an oily canvas

this is your last chance

to piece together

those staccato notes

this is your last chance

to sketch a map for your dreams

because everything belongs to a map

Contributor’s Bio:

 

Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia, where he teaches English. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals worldwide. He authored four poetry chapbooks including Experimental Ruminations (Fowlpox Press, 2012), Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems (Origami Poems Project, 2012), Bye, Donna Summer! (Fowlpox Press, 2014), and Taste of the Edge (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2014). He also authored a fiction book titled Green Cemetery (Moment Publications, 2014) which is in fact the first Tunisian flash fiction collection originally written & published in the English language.

Some of his poems have been translated into German, Greek, Turkish and Italian.

You can see more of his work on his blog at  aliznaidi.blogspot.com.

 

Here is a link to my students' review of his work: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2015/02/montgomery-college-students-review-work.html

To get us back in a jazz frame of mind, I am going to play some Jason Moran.

First is his "Ringing My Phone": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpHq_cRKGyw

Here he is playing with Robert Glasper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2OOwoN5GuI

Moran also wrote the soundtrack to Selma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg8r_A30gyE

Finally, he is playing Monk's "Friday the 13th": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqiTZhVvX18

Enjoy!  I hope to be setting up the spring schedule this weekend.  So if you've sent in work, you will hear from me soon.