From Left To Right by Dr. Qais Ghanem is a collection of his poems which prompts the reader to re-discover himself. For those poetry-lovers who enjoy the advantage of languages, the book contains poems in Arabic, too – offering an array of verse which is of additional poems, and not mere translations of the English poems.

 

Dr. Qais Ghanem expresses in the Preface of From Left to Right, the following: ‘My impression is that the majority of authors tend to write their best books around late middle age, when they are at the peak of their careers, endowed, with a huge amount of life experience, but with their faculties still relatively intact. They also have more time. However, even well beyond retirement age, I find myself fully occupied, with even less time than ever for distractions…’

 

The English halve of the volume contains 30 poems. The poems are diverse, and talk on: People. Conflict. Politics. Justice. In the larger and smaller context, the poems let us track down our present times… our tumultuous times… they need no well-known advertising firm!

 

Poems in the section: Conflict, are very direct in hitting at the cause of our tensions. Depleted Uranium, The Merchants of War, Oblivion in Sight are the obvious examples. The perennial problem of: Justice denied – surfaces with a touching reality in his poem, Message from a Poor Boy. In the poem, I Miss You, the poet pays a touching tribute to his spouse – with his words… ‘Through thick and thin, in love and strife And you came through, no tears or cries…’

 

Dr. Qais Ghanem blogs for Huffington Post, and is an invited columnist for Gulf News, Dubai.  He is a peace activist – having won numerous awards.

Geeta Chhabra