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NilavroNill Talking With
Poet Of The Month
LEILA AL SAMARRAI
APRIL 2022
NILAVRONILL: Why do literature and poetry in particular interest you so much? Please give us some idea about your own perception of literature or poetry in general.
LEILA AL
SAMARRAI: For me, literature is the
liberated language of a liberated man/woman. Their journey takes place through
created nature, but they do not travel like a tourist touring fantastic
archipelagos in search of themselves. They create these archipelagos with their
very movement.
An
example is my favorite book Dante’s Inferno. Not only does Dante, like
tourists, tour different worlds - degrees of consciousness, but he especially
emphasizes the ethical moment without which his
work does not exist, and the aesthetic value of Dante's work goes hand in hand
with his ethical attitude. It is clear that hell must be experienced until the
last round. Aesthetics has a devastating effect on conformism, aesthetics
instead of comfort offers real joy - and literature is intuition and
imagination spread in time and space. Aesthetically, it arises from the
undisturbed action of force, expressed as the free movement of perception. My
aspiration is to look to the abstraction in search of the inner core since pure
poetic energy resides in it. I care about that energy, especially when it comes
to destroying and visualizing the experiential matrix and everything it senses
and creates. I would say that this kind of sensation is unusual and innovative.
That is why it is attractive for every curiosity.
NILAVRONILL: How do you relate your own self existence with your literary life in one hand, and the time around you, in the other.
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: What can I say? These feral times are not all
too friendly to poets. But neither are we to it hence I hope that when it
passes (and transcience is
ever-present), there will be enough poetic testimonials about who we
were and what times we lived in.
NILAVRONILL: Do you believe creative souls flourish more in turmoil than in peace?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: Yes. Art grows stronger in difficult times
if we learn to preserve reason, and that we must ignore its dark virtues and
celebrate its power and wonder. Our world is poisoned by misery, and it is as
if we are wallowing in it. It is in vain to weep over the mind, it is enough to
make an effort around it. There is enough strength of character to prepare
fruit in the winter of the world.
NILAVRONILL: Do you think in this age of information and technology the dimensions of literature have been largely extended beyond our preconceived ideas about literature in general?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: Most
certainly a bigger audience, in wider circles.. who can nonetheless distil the
crux of it all. The Internet is a Babylon where any author can both add and
take away a brick laid, depending on one’s affinities.
NILAVRONILL: Now, in this changing scenario we would like to know from your own life experiences as a poet, writer and a creative soul: How do you respond to this present time?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: You need
to be a “nerd” to be a poet, that is without a doubt, and without regard for
any monetary compensation. Living off of poetry is not all that doable, and
success is, evidently, a category always in flux. As far as I’m concerned, I
find it natural to express myself in verse, and whether I am far from any kind
of recognition, well yes, I am. On the other hand, being recognized in Serbia
means picking up all of the provinciality around you and publishing it. Hence I
want to be recognized outside of my country’s borders because that is indeed
recognition – proper recognition.
NILAVRONILL: Do you believe that all writers are by and large the product of their nationality? And is this an incentive for or an obstacle against becoming a truly international writer?
LEILA SAMARRAI: I come from a mixed marriage (my mother is
Serbian - Greek, and my father is Iraqi) The combination of different cultures
has certainly influenced me to some extent, as well as the cultural heritage of
(ancient) Iraq. It is possible that the Eastern spirit is smoldering in me, in
collision with the Western, modern and materialistic world. It would be
romantic to understand that I am an unusual person in whom two opposing
cultures, religions, customs are united, that in the collision of East and
West, unconsciously, through veins, verses intertwine, and Eastern stories flow
... and they last. That the curses and martyrdoms of both worlds are united in
me. But I share the antithesis of the tribe, I do not belong to any city, no
road, no region, I do not come from Europe or Arabia What comes to my mind is
that many would like to see me somewhere without realizing that the beauty of
my entire "defiant" personality is primarily in my cosmopolitan spirit
that belongs to no one. I am a stranger among people, with the feeling that I
do not belong to anyone. My Arab origin is traumatically disputed in Serbia and
my Serbian origin in the Arab world. I am a stranger, hiding in the shadow of
the night and wandering between the walls, whose fear cannot be smelled,
because I have reached the extreme of memory, in a life that is a collection of
sad and tragic stories, not one, but more lives, not omitting any part, and
what I am writing is just choosing the hidden to be shown on the canvas of
creation. In that and such a world, I created my own ancient literary homeland
in poetry and prose that are often intertwined. Therefore, my literature is
marked by fragmentation, confusion, soaked in anxiety, and non-belonging to
both nations. In that way, my mark determined the only safe place for me, and
that is the place between the worlds, the place where everything is connected
that is otherwise separate, because limits exist only in limited minds. And
who, if not a poet, would be able to bridge the insurmountable, touch the
untouchable and bring the divided worlds closer. So why shouldn't this be true
for others?
NILAVRONILL: Now, if we try to understand the tradition and modernism, do you think literature can play a pivotal role in it? If so, how? Again, how can an individual writer relate himself or herself to the tradition and to modernism?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: Tradition? - Which creator relies on
tradition? He relies on the creative force, not on the dusty paths that others
once walked. If a creator bows to another creator, he bows to himself, there is
no distance, no humility. What is unconventional is the way out of the vicious
circle, the abandonment of the rational order. The purpose of life is truth and
it is only tested in truth. And those who were crucified by ideology and
tradition and burned at the stake knew that God is pain and that facing pain is
such an unconventional thing for a life inspired by conformism -that step that
replaces lies with truth.
NILAVRONILL: Do you think literary criticism has much to do with the development of a poet and the true understanding of his or her poetry?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: Criticism is a mediator between the reader
and the work of art, in a way that asks us how and in what way this work of art
communicates with me, what it tells me about society, and even about myself. If
it does not exist, society will end the dialogue, and without dialogue, we
cannot talk about any cultural progression. I believe that no artistic or cultural
scene can exist without professional criticism, although there is no literary
critic to whom a monument has been erected in his honor. It is necessary to expand the scope of art
criticism in order to be more dynamic, diverse, courageous, and to include
educational institutions in this process. There isn’t even a Serbian literary
scene, nor is it allowed to exist. Critics are at their positions, established
authors at their own, primarily political, then literary, or artistic. In
short, literature in Serbia only exists at the level of gossip. It is a
complete systematic collapse here, and with zero respect for the author and
copyright, nothing will get better and Serbia will remain a literary black
hole, irrespective of the vast number of people willing and capable of writing
something. In such cultural darkness, everything will become a critique,
everyone will be a critic and a nightmare about the space of personal interests
will come true. I shudder when I read ‘thunderous applause, or, for example,
descriptions of something ‘beautifully conceived’ or ‘phenomenal’ because it
means nothing, but I also consider radical ‘critical’ attacks that stem solely
from personal experience to be trivial and destructive. Everyone suddenly knows
how to assess how flat, for example, the characters are, as if I were now
writing about clogged arteries and suggesting surgery.
NILAVRONILL: Do you think society as a whole is the key factor in shaping you up as a poet, or your poetry altogether?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: The artist himself can abstract circumstances, act as if they do not exist. No power, no regime, no social catastrophe can take away the joy of creation, and that is the point. Everything that the world created, and that was sublime and beautiful, was never the fruit of a rational approach. That is why nothing that is sublime and beautiful can be rationally explained That problem, we see, arises forever. There are people who determine the suitability and unsuitability of a work of art. Suddenly, those who talk about the crime become guilty, not those who committed the crime. Things turn around and suddenly a normal society looks like a totalitarian one, life in a city looks like life in an occupied city. When the Nazis asked Picasso why he painted Guernica, he said: I did not paint Guernica, but you Picasso was the personification of an artist faced with the possibility of destroying his work forever - there is also the story of the monstrous art. Unsuitable artists are an eternal problem of society
NILAVRONILL: Do you think people in general actually bother about literature? Do you think this consumerist world is turning the average man away from serious literature?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: There is a Latin saying: Beware of a man
who has read only one book. The age of consumerism has created a world where we
solve every problem or affliction of the spirit by shopping. Capitalism has
definitely done its thing, so shopping has become a kind of pleasure,
psychotherapy, a part of the day that makes our lives meaningful. The fact is,
we have become slaves to shopping, things, and marketing. Film, television, the
Internet - all these are media that offer content to modern man in a more
interesting, and perhaps easier, way, which greatly influences the fact that
the book is read less and less, and more and more viewed from afar. The
statistics on how few people in Serbia read books, visit bookstores and fairs
or even have their own library is devastating, and such data are especially
devastating when we learn that the annual membership fee in libraries is only
400 dinars and that we can always borrow books from friends. What to say?
Artists in the age of technology and the fast pace of life are made up of a
handful of like-minded people, and only 3 percent of people visit the theater. Although
e-book reading is on the rise, there are still fans of the smell of paper and
print, so the ratio is half-and-half. Although, it doesn't matter how or what,
it is important to read and enrich our lives in the most beautiful way.
NILAVRONILL: We would like to know the factors and the peoples who have influenced you immensely in the growing phase of your literary life.
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: My
grandmother, Gorica Trajković, a painter and book lover, recommended books to
me to read. I have been reading since I was four. Emil Zola, Gogol, French and
Russian classics, mostly. I was amazed by Zola's brutal, in fact, life
storytelling technique in which, as if I were present in the novel
"L'Assommoir", I followed the ruin, the loss of moral compass, the
tragic fate of the heroine to the end, starvation, dying ... as a dog. It is
similar to Flaubert. I could almost taste the poison in my mouth, through
Madame Bovary. The writer followed all the phases of her poisoning to the very
end, I don't know exactly how many pages, quite… Life. The way life flows.
NILAVRONILL: How would you evaluate your contemporaries and what are your aspirations for or expectation from the younger generation?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: The world
of prose and poetry is split into various sects which do not recognize the
quality and poetic approach of their peers. What will come in the next hundred
years from all of this, I shudder to think.
NILAVRONILL: Humanity has suffered immensely in the past, and is still suffering around the world. We all know it well. But are you hopeful about our future?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: I believe
in man, which is why I say Maybe where there surely must be a Yes.
NILAVRONILL: What role can literature in general play to bring a better day for every human being?
LEILA AL SAMARRAI: It
teaches us how to think, how to express ourselves. Teaches us compassion. There
is a quote there from Heine: ‘What does this solitary tear mean? It so blurs my
gaze.’ Poetry gives deeper insight into that which we might have missed in the
daily rush of things.
LEILA AL SAMARRAI was
born on October 19th, 1976 in Kragujevac, Serbia. She writes poetry, short
stories, and plays, her work largely containing the motives of fantasy and
humor. Her debut collection of poetry „The Darkness Will Understand“won the
First Prize in the competition organized by the Student cultural center of
Kragujevac in 2002. She has had her work published in numerous local magazines,
both in print and electronic form. Some of her notable works include the
collection of short stories „The Adventures of Boris K.“ by Everest Media and
(as co-author and critic) „Poetry Against Terror: A Tribute to the Victims of
Terrorism Kindle Edition“. Her works were published in Serbian, Hungarian, and
English. She has won numerous awards for her written works, including third
place as a representative of Serbia for the aphorism „Stars and Us“ of the
„Beleg“ competition and three separate awards in the „3-5-7 – A Story in a
Moment“ story competition, as part of the „Helly Cherry“ competition, both in
2011. She currently lives in Belgrade with her three cats. Samarrai uses
absurdism and the elements of farce in her plays. She favors surreal short
stories, horror fiction, satire, and humoresque, enjoying the vaudeville style
of structure interwoven with the style of “Pythonesque” stories. Her goal in
literature is to weave fantastic realism into horror fiction, as well as
utilizing magical realism and the surreal.
Looking Back In Laughter
I remained in the city too long;
Money launderers and ferals of fascism at the temple,
Psychopathy, landlords and gargoyles of Hades,
Ticked the time of my anxiety agonies.
Inconsequential, just look back in laughter.
Adrift from celestial home, cosmic child,
The world reviled, I am alien lost on sordid shores,
Differentiated, solemn soliloquysous to the core.
Evermore infinites, standing alone.
Look back forever in laughter.
Scrying mirror celled phones scream light at zombied fright,
Tribaled in unthinking amorphous greys,
All thoughts delayed, philosophy forbade,
And I am banished from sight.
Look back in cackling.
With knived convulsions, throwing (my) poetry ferociously,
Smelling blood on the wind, smelling the sweat of victim,
…Smelling competition.
Look back in laughter.
Look around…nobody…
Something, someone?…nothing…
Somebody?…nobody in crowns…
Nobody gone to ground…
Nobody is found…
Tomes of related wisdoms nauseate,
The numbers in cruelty mean fate.
Stare intently in tactical laughing.
Strings bind to me in unbreakable unremorseful,
The past hunts behind me.
Medusa drinks me in marbled glass,
In the cruel poison of her irony.
Visages transfixed, trapped in ivory.
Inconsequential…just look back…in laughter.
Out in the transcendence and exiled,
Child of cycling stars wild and purified,
I stand apart, fiery eyed, beautified at surging shores,.
I am hurdling haughty towards the door.
And always now…and forever…
Looking back in laughter.
Butterfly Idyll
In terrible airy alofts, flying high,
Adrift in anima amnesia’s,
Floating in fernweh forgottens,
A low birth in abyss’s,
Radiance in replete radials from rages
…In furious vortices.
You chase enchantment phantoms in Elysian fields,
Drips and drops tell tales to pebbling flowers.
And sea’s shimmering sparkling spray,
Soliloquy’s shadowy opaque on gloaming coasts.
Butterflies, lonesome lighthouse sewn shores,
The cannibalistic roses sanguine swell in opening horrors,
The star language songs sing and susurrates,
Tower of Babel nations are euphoric in linguistic relates,
Your Jupiter cult divine drowned in sacrificial wine.
The great oceans with brumal iced crest glistens luminesce,
Turning their faces in adorations to eloquent suns.
Fires birthed from hollow clouds eruption,
Butterflied veins in vain combust without refrain,
Butterflying flits in solar circles, dying in flaming cycles,
Swayed wings desperate, flutter flails waves weave.
The sea shudders wide and the earth gasps despondency,
It’s ceasing deceasing pleasing, powers Gods.
Deserving of death, deserving of life…
Let him live…let him die…
Despised executioner, I…
But let departures be without punishment.
The triumphant arrogant live…
…but if only…for one more moment.
It floats through sullen azure arches,
Delicates warbles sinking on failing ash spark.
Strained in chained,
Fallen empires cycle timidly,
The swath mutes bitterly.
The screams of the butterfly.
In this witchly silence, the birds have no name.
Howled realizations of impending demise,
Roars in restless logos, linguistic anguishing reviles.
The icy knife lunges, twisting in chests,
The dogs went wild from the scent,
Snake holes sent, trails for sour spent.
Icarus unspeakable without wings,
Eternal falling resonance in eternity sings.
The unsettling crackling of film off it’s reels,
Whooshing winds of terror revealed,
A thousand knives trembled eyes,
Broken winged horses and broken sighs.
Winged intimacy with deceasing,
Can you hear this breaking mercy?
Dropped to knee’s from flight, in front of shining seas light,
Womb burst swallowing lightning, torn harsh flesh darkness in
vain,
A new beast is born from the stain.
The cry of the caterpillar.
Falling lightning, beast in nerve cell mornings,
Beast in miasmas with air on fire, breath a blazed!
Permeated atmosphere suffused imbued.
She hoods submerging stars and turns off the sun,
She transcends death threshing and flies in the whirlwind
storm,
Lunacy grasps the winged with scorn.
Transfigurations to sinister,
The harmonies collapse in desolation,
The intestines scream dissolution.
Sinking stars feverishly shaking black,
Red retch blood glares,
The veins swell chthonic flares.
Unquenchable expires,
Unsatiated thirst…fires!
This dawn of tamed passion possessed,
Mantles tremble in lowering laments,
The black forests gloam obsidian under black moons,
The earthquakes grumble morbidity too soon.
Dying iris turns transient,
Swallows hushed in sallow hollows,
The Hearances reviled,
The howl of the butterfly.
On this heartbreak soil
Deathly modus’s susurrous’s shipwrecks.
The Reaper ravages us all…
…For loss of her.
BUTTERFLY: Death, I heard you while you were breathing...
I heard you while you were sleeping…
I heard you while you were weeping….
I heard you while you were screaming…
Centuries of noosed escape,
Eons of eluding fate.
Shrieked clarions called silent,
On immortal heights.
The laughter of the butterfly.
Penny Dreadful
Rabisu demon lurking menacing at doors, desert anguishes and
roads of bone,
At bittered ends and vicious roaming form, in the dust reeking
reborn.
Pouncing lurid predator vampirically, sardonic seizers in
scorn,
And whispers: “I’m fascinated by your wicked and lucid
appetite for your own useless life.”
In lament from fluttering sent, leaps from window eyed portals
denied me,
And whispers: “Oh no, I will bare no escape from existences
framed refrain,
I choose you, beautifully lined face with loneliness, losses
and clutched crosses.”
I am placing maliciousness monsters in the pillory, reaching
hangman rivalry,
Oracle with filled eyes of abhorrent horrors, vile villainy,
disgusting revelry.
Malice madness in theatrics, harbouring hunts of hauntedness
in the gothicness.
My Morrigain, my Mora demoness of dark war and warrior
corpses,
She susurrous’s doom and washes the bloody cloaks of the
fallen soon,
My one way love affair with fated despair.
Cain in crestfallen, commits unforgivable sin against spirit,
The demons converging, surrounding and urging,
The innocent blood screams vengeance from the ground purging.
Corpses long dead roar excavations incarnations,
Incantations transfiguring graves,
Fierce golden reigns irony remains.
Nightmares veins surreal tentacles, tear tense dreams from
tight eyelids,
Fang drip foul viles in gnashing violence,
The grand bizarre at the feverished abhorrence carnival,
The glassy eyed emptiness of brumal freak shows.
I smell like sleepwalking, staggering, pale sober disheveled,
The freedom of hurtling heights bridge jumping ecstatically,
Running wild like thrown matches at gasoline.
The beauty of illusion bleeding disappointingly,
The nightmare fits it’s grip in bellicose whimpers,
The darkness of the grave takes you delicately,
The screamers sing in outbursts of enthusiasm ringing,
White satin nights in nocturnal delight flinging.
The elusive, unearthly apparition was ignored.
Sorcerer horror summoning hoarse voiced Bael invisible,
King crowned sixty six with demon legions indivisible.
I was born barefoot and harsh in conditioning,
Washing away wounds of violent love eternally.
Handsome insomniacs gently jumped on me,
With eyes blinking surrounding me the world turns
disgustingly,
Nauseating turns drunkenly in fits of death shaming me.
I pull back pale, evil spirits rise with days dawning.
In ditched depths collapse and grips his darkened voice is
hardening,
Galabiya and long scarfed Ahriman tilts his head in unbearable
laughter attacking:
“You’re anguished miseries past entertain me,
You’re fool hardy determinants sustain me.”
The dark figure covers his delusions in ghostly fog,
Hiding the curves of mocking derisive smile mischievous,
The deception of tethered feathered cheerful and devil eyed,
Amused by this Sisyphean pilgrim prides to conjure wild
Ahriman.
Golden-mouthed perceptively moving, lucidly mystical moving
metaphysics assistant,
In a long fluttering dress stirring surfaces into snaking
molten lava,
Covering the corrugated cracks in Babylonian sandstone
liberally.
The fictions, projections creating subconscious,
The evil eye and other Jinnah making iniquity,
One day all will be concluded in concussiveness.
Connecting extremes and insanity to contextually,
Esoteric central core in magic cube of ancient antiquity,
Following flowing pictures through dusked indignities.
Through furtive white crosses fealty and it’s central orange,
Color’s evolve spiral through final chapters doors.
In the end a detachable mixture, a riddle puzzled,
A synapsed seclusion and the task is solved.
There are many ways to kill (a man),
And I taught them.
There are many ways to murder (me).
And I brought them.
Oh give me…pain with no repose,
Oh give me…ears that are closed,
Oh give me…mouths with no response,
Oh give me the burden of a new tongued order,
And the skin rhythmed touch of migrating metaphor.
Oh his beautiful man, born of demon King Ravana,
Raised in argent ardency dimensions, visionaries,
Silveries through strange pattern properties,
Sacral geometries carnivale spinning pellucidly,
Samhain and Scylla spiral madly metaphysically.
Resolutely, while dying they cut their hair free,
Administration of death in her presence seen.
Lost children eternally, anomalous demons greeting them.
The world flies backwards unreality of what it requires.
Ephemeral to ambiguities flame extinguishing names.
The dead enfold, born moaning into this world.
Celtic God’s and blackened blacksmith sorcery,
Toys in the palms of callous cannibalistic Chronos,
Witches ride wildly for frightful Phobos,
From the bales of fear my private lunacy changes me.
Monstrosities grunting courageously,
Mumbling rotten membranes,
Leaves, thorns, beast horns, intestines, heart shadowed
scorns,
Fright at might dear antlers dead and red, rusty machinery.
Morning breaks broke blood torments,
Nights in hellish anguish shatters.
He tore all his clothes off, and naked he roars with torched
lips,
Lunacy smile wild and wide shadowed caustic fits,
Lives lonesome black buffalo and rabid holy madman.
The stalking beast entreats me in rooms without vision,
Where the light will remain hidden,
Save fiery twilight eternally bidden.
“There is nothing that is alive here” it cackles at my
shackles,
”If the light is prayed the shadows will explode against
expiring,
You do not know what is happening to you, hellish heresy
clarity confuse.”
I should shake the walls, slam fists to tables expectantly, I
said:
“I will make my blood flow like a tap!” I almost didn’t bleed,
I revealed my wound to wise effect of intercede,
He told me to dream.
It’s been a year and still he stands there sirene,
I pound him and drown him, stab him, confounds him,
Nothing moves him.
The world breaks down around him,
He sneers and peels and smears,
He curses and tears,
And breaks…
And cuts like a beast.
I’m Dying Roman
Roman nights ravenous roiled cloth scarlet skies,
Highlights, horrifying histories rolling wheels,
Beneath bronze brazen bright bare heels.
Sheathed in salacious fraught in pagan minds divine.
Centuries stand strident in phalanx,
Gaul and Carthage in Punic’s green retreating,
Machinations expansion explosions engineered.
We are crossing the Rubicon,
Man made God, Julius Caesar revered.
“Mars Exulti!” rumbles bellicose from behind shields,
Murmurs to bellows ominous escalating rages,
Thunders from voices vicious escaping cages,
Legio Aeterna Victrix proud shakes the ground aloud,
Barbarians raining terror driven out forever.
The she-wolf still spins wild sanctities,
Howling screams against screens and scaffolding safeguard,
Hunting confinement malignment means.
The wings barred disease,
Airways ring no reprieve in the eternal streets.
Ash and iron curse justice for betray,
Sacrifice smiting those that walk astray,
The underworld God’s obey my name.
The knife strikes disposed drama ramming,
Their whole being crushed in the damning.
Coal and smoke, tar sills quivering in rage,
Outskirts mob morale delayed in a scarce age,
Furious fists fighting futile battlements.
Augustus screams “Mars wake up!”
Shaken spears engaged in fevered rampage.
Gorgon’s rattling riddles in Octavian dreams,
Actium and Philippi tearing me at the seems,
Marching ides chorus in tumultuous tides,
Neptune’s imbibes my failure, sea crashing collides.
Brace the dagger where Alexander once stood,
Gasped last breathes, in shallowing descent,
Cleopatra in venomous raptures consumed.
The fleeting forces, life, pulsing to perdition,
Dis Pater Pluto seeking coins for admission.
The paths for miles, leading me back home to Roma,
Tentacle’s roads ravishing the world.
Coliseum crumbling’s ruins to rumbles,
When she falls, so weeps the world.
Rome is dying.
And I’m dying Roman.
The suns jaws flair Sol Invictus in sacrifice.
The gladius turns, swelling exsanguinating my Niles,
The funeral pyre wins, flames consuming black my sin,
27 unforeseen knives, spartha to self suicide taking life.
Venom and mercenaries, poison and thrumming armies,
Anubis remorseless turns pitiless his eyes.
And somewhere behind the names…
I’ve lived savage and despised,
I’ve sooted my eyes…
But I’m dying Roman.
Thus Spoke My Mother
You do not grasp – the spilled blood is chiming
From unveiling you wrongfully dread
In agony of you yourself
While we pine atop Grecian terraces.
Daughter
Still rivers are audible in endeavor
And at that conjoined
In mirrors is the road to land of dead
And worshippers of the chronometer
And the unachievable bloom of summer
Put the pigeon on the fire my daughter
We are going to satiate ourselves
Grasshoppers as well my daughter
Before they abandon us through the windows
I forefeel that the unreliable man
quiets his breath and embarks on the way
of Beauty, Ordinance and Wars
The signs along the path are the only thing left for you
Thus spoke my mother.
Seek no longer the soil
Forgotten among the trees
Under which you were born
In the chosen night
When the grasshoppers flew away from the terraces
Into the heap of voices filled with hatred
Directed towards me
Silent mother
Not even a sound to flicker within me
How could I have known
About the other side of maps
Are they coming yet to take me
Rooted in the last morning of a bullet
I arise barefoot
The sea is frightened
Like ground from thunder
LEILA SAMARRAI was
born on October 19th, 1976 in Kragujevac, Serbia. She writes poetry, short
stories, and plays, her work largely containing the motives of fantasy and
humor. Her debut collection of poetry „The Darkness Will Understand“won the
First Prize in the competition organized by the Student cultural center of
Kragujevac in 2002. She has had her work published in numerous local magazines,
both in print and electronic form. Some of her notable works include the
collection of short stories „The Adventures of Boris K.“ by Everest Media and
(as co-author and critic) „Poetry Against Terror: A Tribute to the Victims of
Terrorism Kindle Edition“. Her works were published in Serbian, Hungarian, and
English. She has won numerous awards for her written works, including third
place as a representative of Serbia for the aphorism „Stars and Us“ of the
„Beleg“ competition and three separate awards in the „3-5-7 – A Story in a
Moment“ story competition, as part of the „Helly Cherry“ competition, both in
2011. She currently lives in Belgrade with her three cats. Samarrai uses
absurdism and the elements of farce in her plays. She favors surreal short
stories, horror fiction, satire, and humoresque, enjoying the vaudeville style
of structure interwoven with the style of “Pythonesque” stories. Her goal in
literature is to weave fantastic realism into horror fiction, as well as
utilizing magical realism and the surreal.
