Wonderland

Wonderland presents the celebrated poetry of Sarwat Zahra in English translation for the first time. This collection includes poems drawn from her previous two volumes, Song of the Blazing Wind (2002) and From Time's Captivity (2013), plus a generous selection of her newest work. Zahra writes in free verse and in the traditional ghazal form, treating popular culture, the internet, science, work, the "male gaze," and the daily news in poems of lament, protest, and lyric beauty. She writes of romantic love, often contributing to the tradition of love poems that shade into metaphysical thought and religious yearning. Sarwat Zahra is a vivid and fearless poet whose voice, in this moment, must be heard: "Behold this Journey! . . . before the first steps / An intention moved— / You in my heart, primordial longing / Issuing first from the stench of caves, / My helix scratch on their walls . . .."