This Is What Happened

By Salman Akhtar

Tautly stretched over the chasm between idolization and iconoclasm, restraint and audacity, and the man-animal distinction, the poems contained in this book evoke scintillating images and garden- fresh metaphors.

Parrots that live on Mount Everest, tigers who swallow poets, fishless oceans, ill-tempered camels, and sparrows of memory coexist in its pages with pancakes of platitudes, the Great Mountain of Fear, a starved Bedouin who feels enormous guilt for being hungry, the change in the direction of toes with age, and the one-eyed blacksmith of time. Never has magical surrealism cloaked existential truths better in poetry.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1912573709
• ISBN13: 9781912573707
• Release Date: May 2021
• Publisher: Sphinx Books
• Length: 76 Pages
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.1" x 7.8"