Libya and Haiku

Last night heard André Naffis-Sahely lecture on Alessandro Spina’s life and work at SF Vanni, the oldest Italian-language bookshop in the US. I got in touch with André after reading and enjoying the selection of his poetry in Oxford Poets 2013, published by Carcanet Press. At the lecture André read from his translation of Spina’s "The Confines of the Shadow," a cycle of historical novels charting the history of Libya from 1911 to the 1960s, which won Spina, a Syrian Maronite born in Benghazi, the Bagutta Prize. The first volume of three projected volumes will hit the bookshops in two weeks' time.


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an old man asleep
in a foldable wheelchair
disappearing sun

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