Shearsman Books

Paperback, 92pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610224

The Middle East, both real and imagined, forms the background against which George Messo's third collection, Hearing Still, shapes its recurring themes: silence, destruction, resistance, and endurance. The poems are, at times, as sparse as the landscapes they inhabit; fragile breaths quivering at the edge of worlds driven by catastrophe and restored by human dignity. Ranging through Turkey, Lebanon and Palestine, to the gravel deserts of Oman, and the desolate coastal plains of the Arabian Gulf, Messo's uniquely strange and illusive vision is at once mysterious and distressing.

For Marvin Bell, Messo's is a 'genuine' voice, in poems that 'live on the earth and in the air at the same time' and 'push the envelope where it matters.'

". . . exquisite images, exquisite pacing, leaving time and space for the poetry to resonate imaginatively, musically, emotionally, intellectually." —Andy Brown

"Unique. Moving." —Michael Lowenthal

". . . passionate sensual attention to the world . . . a sense-saturated language." —Deena Linett

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