All One’s Blue

‘Kazim Ali is a traveller both in time and in space, taking us into worlds that seem far apart–the omnipresent pastness of Cairo, contemporary Albany, the music of Alice Coltrane–but which, in fact, are bound together by his breath; the ways he breathes are the ways he writes. The result, far from being insubstantial, is as real as the sky, forever changing above us without our knowledge, but which achingly asks us to follow the poet as he dares its embrace.This is a beautiful, haunting book.’–Adil Jussawalla ‘Age-old stories made of rain and skin and flowering into wild bush fires are born out of Kazim Ali’s poetry. The then and the now become blurred as he relives with a new urgency the interrogations of our time through the prism of Sufi lore and song. Myths forming the skeleton of men are seized and burst apart. Between endless time and ephemeral instant, the poet’s words draw us into a dancing net where we shake with untold uncertainties: Illusion is the sheet and the thing lying under it.” The secrecy of desire lies deep at the heart of this collection of poetry–immensely seductive.’–Ananda Devi”