My Rivers by Faruk Šehić. Translated from the Bosnian by S.D. Curtis
ISBN: 978-1-912545-353
“My Rivers is fed from the headwater of the Bosnian war by memories that mix and dissolve in the estuary of our present. Sometimes Faruk Šehić’s swirling words are expansive and deep; at other times his language narrows, silted by mourning, but such wetlands are generative. This poetry is fresh water that carries vital salts and nutrients to us.” David Howard
My Rivers is an event in four cycles: The Loire, The Spree, The Drina and the Beyond the River. Never overly strict in form, Šehić wants his poetry to reach a wide range of readers, dealing with themes of post-war reality and the culture of remembrance in a wider context than his homeland. The book seeks catharsis, to the extent to which it is possible in a post-conflict society like Bosnia, along with celebrating the universal themes of intimacy, love, freedom.
Praise for Under Pressure and Quiet Flows the Una:
“Šehić’s fine eye for detail serves to aestheticize atrocity without ever fetishizing it …Brilliant, insightful, poetic, and breath-taking” LA Review of Books
“Through his exploration of war and peace, innocence and grief, Šehić has composed a humbling meditation on an existential conundrum that is central to collective and private trauma, but also to more ordinary human experience: how to keep the inner self whole in a world that will assault it in unimaginable ways.”
Kapka Kassabova, The Guardian
