The Rag Song: Poems

It is rare to find on the shelves of bookstores a poetry anthology written by a poet in two languages with equal fluency. "The Rag Song" is one of those rare books that brings together the English translation and the original poems written in Arabic Egyptian language selected from ten collections published by Ossama Farahat over about three decades, from the first book (نفس واحد) One Breath (1994) to (قصر الكلام) In Short (2021). The Rag Song manifests the poet, Ossama Farahat, as the translator of his own poems written in Arabic Egyptian into another language, English in this case, without losing the essence of the poetry in both languages. The experience of the poet Ossama Farahat is a significant poetic experience in the Arabic Egyptian language, best described as "The Imagination of Necessity". Accordingly, the poet is seen to be absorbed in his society's issues as well as reenact them as poetry. Farahat never fails to attend to such issues in every matter he deems necessary. You rarely find in his poetry moments of distraction from the community, its worries, and its dreams. He takes matters without belittling, and if he does so, he resorts to the popular mold in which he pours his satirical and bitter satire on social, cultural and political situations. Ossama Farahat is a poet whose eyes are on the street. It is his first and last point of reference. His poetic experience, in its entirety, can be viewed as belonging to what we might call "The Poetry of the Field" where he is keen on pursuing facts, events, sites and characters that constitute prominent social and political signs, observing their manifestations and reenacting them through his stance and ground-breaking vision of the world. You can find more online poems and critical readings for Ossama Farahat in his webpages on both: YouTube at https: //www.youtube.com/user/khadeeg and Soundcloud https: //soundcloud.com/ossama-farahat/