Harp in a fire Place
"Hussain Ahmed’s language resonates with the precision and detail of an earnest artist. A fine blend of history, memory, and spirituality, poems in this volume wax heroic: approaching despair, distance and loss with the certitude of hope. The poet invokes nature in its fullness and precariousness as witness to survival—birds in flight, bodies and geographies out of the hold of old colonies, the ritual of music engraved on human skin. This is a majestic work of an important voice"
—Naza Amaeze Okoli, editor of African Writer Magazine
“‘I am sick of the nostalgia that comes with a stale memory,’ Hussain Ahmed writes, and ‘today, history is our enemy,’ in two separate poems where Wi-Fi features in the titles, in configurations as sobering as they are delightful. These modern and ancient juxtapositions are just one aspect of the relief I experienced reading Harp, a collection that brought ideas like ethos, faith, and soul back into my periphery.”
—Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam and Registers of Illuminated Villages