"Perhaps I am just an idea that chose the face of the words to form and embody, I hardly know me because of the intensity of the adherence to me, from mud and water, fear and certainty, and reassurance and madness. I think I am a poem that has not yet been born, but it prepares every time for a beautiful labor."
With these words, the Lebanese-French poet and novelist Sarah Bashar Al-Zain knows about herself, in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, after she released her book "Until the beginning of poetry" in the conditions of the home quarantine imposed by the spread of the Corona pandemic.
Sarah is a proofreader and proofreader, and writes literary criticism.
She has 3 novels, "If she would die, on the shore of eternity, a ray in the dark night."
Adventure .. light
She says about the new edition that it is an adventure, as book fairs are closed, signatures are not available, economic conditions are bad, and shipping books is difficult in the entire Arab world.
It considers publishing the book a form of rebellion and resistance, and a victory for poetry over the culture of death and surrender, "it is a belief in the possible versus submission to the impossible, is choosing the light instead of stoning the dark!"
Diwan of the poet Sarah Al-Zein (the island)
There are about 50 poems in the book between metered, verbal and free poetry, which coincide between love and the homeland, contradictory feelings, and poetry with attractive expressions, in which the vocabulary of the language evokes its slumber, beautifies, refines and creates it in poems.
How does her idea embody between poetry and novel?
Sarah says, "Whenever astonishment takes me, I take off my body and prostrate in the presence of amazement, and forget my place and time to spread a ton of words. I still live in the world of the novel's delusions with me, and the ropes of the narration still catch my breath and drag me towards it without mercy, but poetry has seized what is left in me." He pulled me out of me with cleverness and dexterity, and stretched the strings of his music to my neck and tightened his fist. How beautiful surrender was!
She adds that each poem has its own peculiarity, merit, elegance and a special case, "even some of my distorted poems I love, for it is they that helped me give birth to more beautiful and magical poems."
She loves all forms of poetry, and says that she finds the space for flying in the poetry of the metaphor more spacious, and loves the challenges that vertical poetry puts every time, and the prose poem is a special world of loud and screaming inner rhythm.
Sarah is from a family that tastes poetry and conserves it.
And her father used to improvise poetry every evening and the children enjoyed it, as she recounts.
Mother Poetess
About coordinating her time, being a working woman, poet, novelist, wife and mother, she considers it not easy, especially since her children are still young and need constant follow-up, and the work requires high focus, especially since she is working on a master's thesis and requires time for research and writing.
She adds that social media is taking over a portion of the time.
In addition to the husband, the house, and social responsibilities, and all that is mentioned constitutes a kind of pressure, which is an obstacle to writing poetry and novel, "but if the poem comes, it imposes itself on me and takes me from myself."
Regarding the relationship between spouses when the wife is under the spotlight, she indicates that awareness and culture are evident in such situations, as the man is the partner of the woman in success and prominence and vice versa, and this partnership allows the relationship to be completed upward, and that the matter is not without some shortcomings and obstacles, but the origin In the wisdom of the spouses and relieving them of the minor matters that can be overlooked.
She considers that society may have a negative influence if it tries to detract from the value of the husband or to chatter about traditions, formalities, etc., and it may affect positively if he praises the man’s support for his wife and his main role in the success of his partner.
She says that what is important in the first case is to ignore, and in the second to thanks and appreciation.
The criticism is honored
Sarah completes her master's thesis on criticism of criticism, and considers that criticism in itself is a kind of honor for creative work, even if it carries some notes. In her opinion, a true critic chooses only true poets and writers and real texts. Refining my language by arming it with systematic writing tools. "
And she finds that the creative work is a partnership between the critic and the creator, and she says that the critic becomes the creator of a new text after each reading, and the creative text is a closed work in exchange for criticism, which is a work that is open to multiple readings, according to Todorov.
A sport without matches
Sarah, who won a gold medal in the long jump and a cup in table tennis, recalls that she still plays sports and plays ping pong (table tennis) and skiing, but without participating in sports matches because of her concerns, time, home and family on the one hand, and because I have not kept 100% on My previous physical fitness, although I always try and strive to maintain it, but life sometimes precedes us. "
Excerpts from the poem:
Gasp of death
I know that the gasps of death will not leave you
How you concealed his pain and your pain
...
I am old in my doubts and questions
I need your fear to forget the question with you
I need to hide from the mirror my stumbling block
I have to find parts of it that cut you off ...