THE GATES OF THE SUN (Poems)
Author: Nassira Belloula-Azouz
Translation: Dr Peter Thompson
Publisher: Rafar
Montreal, June 25, 2011
Early work poetry with lots of contemporary sensibility and authenticity
Arab, Feminine and Feminist, Love, War and Absence...
THE GATES OF THE SUN (Les portes du soleil) is an early work by a now well-recognized Algerian author and journalist who was barely 20 years of age when first published.
Both feminine and feminist while truly expressing sincerity, authenticity, truth, love, and anguish, Nassira Belloula wrote most of the poems in this book when in high school. Both strong and beautiful her young age poetry was translated into both English and Spanish.
GATES OF THE SUN express hope while in disarray, youth in a country at war, women facing dress codes, love, sadness.
GATES OF THE SUN also breathe of hope for love at the gates of a beautifully chosen peaceful and loving life for both men and women.
This book is a must-read, 90 pages of peace in the heart. Since such peace is not in the world around us. Nassira Belloula dedicates her thoughts to Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, to a lover and musician checking his empty pockets, to girls being given in marriage and feeling like they've been raped while the whole family is celebrating this precise fact, to lovers having been separated by the madness of few or many...
Interview with the author conducted at
Montreal's Botanical Garden in spring 2011
NASSIRA BELLOULA-AZOUZ is a prominent Arab writer born in 1961 in Algeria, where she worled as a journalist. A writer of both poetry and novels, she expresses not only the Arab situation, but the conditions for women in modern Algeria. One year ago, she immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada where she participates in a weekly radio show on French CBC.
PETER THOMPSON teaches modern languages and literature at Roger Williams University (USA).
Expressing love, hate, war, childhood, women, men, newspapers, relationships, immigration...
In her poem "A Day Just For Us", Nassira Belloula wishes for a renewed and better world:
So you can wash the rage / from all men, / and lead women to drink hope
In her poem "A Child At Sabra", Belloula could be talking about immigrants:
My mother wanted to offer me
Hope for my eighth birthday
..........................................
..... Don't be afraid;
You've probably seen me
on your screens,
in the columns of your papers,
you have spoken of me
and my family
In her poem "Suspended in Absence", Belloula expresses love and sadness from hurt caused by separation:
How pale, your face, / exhausted from long wandering / in other faces, / looking for mine!
Learn more about this Author :
Nassira Belloula : Le féminisme est en lui-même une culture ! (Article with many links to her books & more)
Nassira Belloula's Author Page on Facebook
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