1. Lebanese poet Asala Lamaa signed her new poetry collection, “While Ordinary Things Gaze at You,” published by Al-Mutawassit Books, at the Rabat International Book Fair.
In statements to the “Sada El-Balad” website, Asala Lamaa said that this is her second collection, following her first, “A Glimpse Toward a Faint Tone,” released in early 2022.
She added: “I am happy that poetry has been generous to me to this extent, especially regarding the maturity and progress of the experience and the clarification of my own voice. In the collection, there are anxieties, worries, questions, and a voyage that does not necessarily reach a destination. I hope it reaches the largest number of readers because the true life of poems begins and renews with every reading, and that it impacts at least one reader’s life.”
She explained that the difference between her first collection, “A Glimpse Toward a Faint Tone,” and her second, “While Ordinary Things Gaze at You,” is the difference in her own self between when she wrote the first and when she wrote the second. She emphasized that poetry is her most honest mirror, and our poems live with us, grow with us, and are refined with us, noting: “We are the product of our life and literary experiences combined; disappointments, maturity, and motherhood on one hand, and reading, dedication to writing, and working with language on the other. All of this changes us in days, not years, and it changes our poems to the same degree. I still write as I breathe, without thinking or artifice, but there is a difference between the two experiences. In both collections, there is the same climate of anxiety, but in the second, I cling more to my motherhood to see the horizon more calmly, and I touch upon more diverse themes. The language is more refined, the text is more condensed, and my voice adopts a clearer tone. I feel satisfied with the level of difference between the two collections, and I will not publish a third one before I am sure that I am still capable of achieving this progress in the experience.”
Asala Lamaa is a Lebanese poet residing in France, holding a PhD in oncology and working in this field. Her first collection, “A Glimpse Toward a Faint Tone,” was published in 2022 by Athar Publishing. She periodically publishes articles, poems, and texts in several Arab websites and newspapers.
