Overview

Simply Being is a celebration of the various facets of life, its blessings, beauties, and challenges. Exploring the richness of our manifold existence seen through the many different lenses beyond the quotidian and the mundane, Roula-Maria Dib looks at the multifariousness of reality and nuances of the self with its different roles and experiences, peeking into the parallel worlds of myth, and art, which infuse our everyday life. The poems in this collection are a compilation of verses on memories, aspirations, ekphrasis, and the different forms of love that shape us into who we are.

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9781630519254

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Through pure joy of language, Dib's poetry shows us the paucity of a world without myth and mystery. We do not have to reject the gods just because we don't take them literally. Every moment of life is bursting with miracles, and the requisite tragedies of life are vital initiations. Dib chooses each word carefully- ventana, hyssop, squid- to paint striking, unforgettable images. Pure magic. Lorette C. Luzajic, author of Pretty Time Machine, editor, The Ekphrastic Review Roula-Maria Dib wears her learning lightly. Her deep love of art, language and literature shines through in each beautifully shaped poem. Deftly she weaves a rich texture of the sensual meanings of the body of life into her erudite and sumptuous ekphrastic poetry. Some poems are complex tapestries that breathe from a literature of the past, now imbued with contemporary wisdom. These are well worth the time needed to immerse oneself in the intricacies and webs of imagery, the physical presences and a sometimes almost spiritual feeling. Other poems are witty and humorous takes on fairytales or full of Dib's profound connection to humanity and to the people she loves, her daughter, her mother, full of light and transience. Salma Ahmad Caller, artist and poet Roula-Maria Dib's Simply Being is a cleverly constructed volume of new poetry that contains and transmits an electrical charge of high-energy language infused with the poet's love of life and a bold use of intense colour throughout. Dib's piercing observation of our world with all of its dilemmas and traumas is juxtaposed with the poet's bodily knowing and absolute surety that we have much to celebrate and to protect in order to pass on our acquired knowledge to our descendants. We must begin now to think about the human heart and its mirror, our human ecology and our ecosystems. There is a fragile echoing yearning in Dib's work which the reader will attune to that recalls the poet Mary Oliver's paens to this natural world that we have inherited and our relationship to and our duty of care for mother earth. Christine Murray, Poet, author of Gold Friend, Editor, Poethead

Author Information

Roula-Maria Dib (PhD, Leeds) is a creative writer and literary scholar. Currently, she is a professor of English at the American University in Dubai, and editor-in-chief of Indelible, the university's literary journal. Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in several journals. Her new book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature was published in March 2020. She is a member of the International Association for Jungian Studies, the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies, and the British Association for Modernist Studies. Th e themes that pervade her work usually revolve around different aspects of human nature, ekphrasis, surrealism, and mythology.

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