What a Great Day

We traverse the pages of this book alongside the artist Reem Al-Bayat, as we read the poetic texts of the poet Ahmad Al-Mulla, which this time carry an intensity and fragmentation so severe that they differ from what he wrote in his previous collections. Al-Bayat hangs her paintings in what resembles a future memory of the texts, printing them in black and white as is always the case with primal things, casting their shadows over the words. The eye, as it reads and looks at the same time, evokes meanings that the reader may be surprised to find are not in the text or the drawing alone, but in both together, facing each other like two chairs in a waiting room. Faced with this novelty, which Al-Mulla has long attempted in his prose poetry, and reflected by Al-Bayat in the poses of her drawn characters, the reader can only relate this to a long history of books where poetry and art intertwine, continuing that tradition.

Author : Ahmed Almulla
Illustrator : Reem Sameer Albayyat