Ool Jalool

Gather all the ingredients/Invite all the guests. Place/Hold butter/dreams in the/in your/large saucepan/belly-button/ to begin/a little casket/ with the soup/ to close in. So instructs a “recipe” by Fizza Abbas from a debut chapbook which marks a highly original new voice in poetry. ‘Ool Jalool’ means ‘clumsy’ in Urdu and reading her work can feel like opening the door to a tumultuous kitchen with multiple pots on the stove, threatening to bubble over with paroxysmal force. With disarming energy and innovation these poems tackle the weighty subjects of miscarriage, poverty, secretrarian divide and sexual abuse. They also explore the complex issue of self-esteem and the acute apprehension suffered when trying to meet traditional expectations, a notion which is extended to the creative process itself and the poet’s experience of writing in a second language. This is work of honest self-reflection which results in an exciting discovery – poetic language found in translation. -Louise Peterkin, Author of The Night Jar