One of the central writers and thinkers in contemporary Maghreb letters and banned by the Moroccan government, Abdellatif Laabi’s poetry is increasingly influential on the international scene
and spans six decades of political and literary change, innovation, and struggle. Including a wide range of work, from piercing domestic love poetry to a fierce lyricism of social resistance
informed by nearly a decade spent in prison for ＂crimes of opinion,＂ all of Laabi’s poetry is situated firmly against tyranny and for life--an almost mythic sense of spiritual and earthly joy
emanates from this resistance through the darkness of political oppression. This selection of poetry has been masterfully rendered into English for the first time by Donald Nicholson-Smith and
introduced by the eminent poet and critic Pierre Joris--the first in translation to be chosen by Laabi himself.
