Solio

In these otherworldly poetry sequences, Samira Negrouche reminds us that ‘all life is movement,’ where ‘time passes through me / beings pass through me / they are me / I am them.’ The ‘I’ is representative of one voice, three voices, all voices, all rooted in movement as their bodies brush past one another, brush against thresholds of time and space. Everything is in flux—including the dream-like landscapes at the borders of borders—as the poet seeks to recover parts of self and memory, on both a personal and universal level. In these poems, history-laden locales such as Algiers, Timbuktu, N’Djamena, Cotonou, Zanzibar, Cape Town and Gorée are evoked. Even the language, expertly and sensitively translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, refuses to be pinned down, as it loops back on itself. At times contradictory, at times fractured in meaning, syntax and diction, the playful language is riddled with ‘restless’ verbs. In the end, the ‘I’ takes on prophetic overtones, instilling hope for the future.

“Solio—aptly named for a word whose root belongs to several world languages—means crossing, threshold, or coming to attention. This word, used in the last poem of the volume, showcases Negrouche’s repeated segue between presence and absence, observation and vision. It indicates her ability to shoulder the weight of the universe’s memory that lives in her ‘three mother tongues’. .  .  Her poetry reads like an unhurried act of poetic self-accomplishment.”—World Literature Today

“Although Negrouche’s work has been translated into many languages, it is perhaps English that is most resistant to poetic abstraction. That Carlson has still managed to translate with sensitivity and resonance is a testament to her expertise and fine poetic ear, not least when in the original text – as she explains in the preface – real and imaginary journeys/crossings are so deftly integrated within music, theme and poetic process [ . . . ] ”—Abigail Ardelle Zammit, The Los Angeles Review