The Heart and the Subsidiary
If you missed Fatima Al Matar’s ‘First Prize’ –winning performance at last month’s slam in Wigan, then here is a chance to catch up with her work.
She has now launched her poetry collection ‘The Heart and the Subsidiary’ - available now to buy on Amazon, or to reserve at your local library.
This new and original collection reflects on motherhood, love, loss and abuse, beautifully interpreting the heart’s journey through the many different relationships and experiences in a woman’s life.
Kuwaiti born Fatima has been in England for five years now, and is currently doing her PhD in International Economic Law at Warwick University. She lives in Coventry with her four year old daughter, and writes, almost exclusively, in English.
Her poetry has appeared in several Poetry Journals, including Acumen, Angelic Dynamo, The Journal and FurtherMonthly; and her poem ‘Lessons’ has been shortlisted for the Torbay Poetry Award. Her commissioned poem ‘The Self’ won her a spot to perform on St. George’s day in Leicester, last April.
Fatima’s first language is Arabic, and she has recently become involved with Write Out Loud’s Cross Cultural Poetry Project.
She said, ‘It was very interesting because it was the first time I’d attempted to translate English to Arabic – it needed a huge effort to preserve the music, rhythm and poetic feel.’
Arabic poetry has a long history, but Fatima feels that its many rules – both of form and culture, sometimes constrain the poet. She prefers the freedom of expression that she feels writing in English affords her, and therefore she is more able to explore the beauty of the language.
In September she will be returning to Kuwait, and whilst she is looking forward to going home she acknowledges that she will miss the U.K., particularly as there is little or no readership for her style of poetry there.
She said, ‘The message I’d like to send – is to free Arabic poetry from its shackles, so that it could be all that it could be, the way English poetry often is – though not to take it to the degraded level of shouting and strong language.’
We hope that she will continue to be a member of WOL, and continue to be involved with the CCP project. If you want to see the work Fatima has done, please go to:
