Ali Alizadeh is a young poet struggling to make sense of a cruel and chaotic world. He strives for a language that can fuse reality and myth, youthful longings and ancient wisdom, the spiritual and the materialistic. He draws upon many influences, ranging from the poet's Persian traditions, to poetic traditions both ancient and modern, East and West. Idealism and disillusion stalk side by side. Love duels with anger. The most moving poems document the author's journey from Iran to Australia and his youthful quest for love. The result is a work-in-progress that lays bare the poet's desperate struggle for inner peace and meaning in a world engaged in seemingly endless warring and demonisation -- Arnold Zable In our time which is, against all hopes, a century of war, when fundamentalist rhetoric has taken on new life in a cosmic phantasmagoria of destruction and hatred, Ali Alizadeh's fast-moving poetry holds us to today's issues of identity and culture, its dilemmas of allegiance and responsibility. The drama of humanity's complex heritage has no more relevant or urgent voice. -- Judith Rodriguez
Ali Alizadeh is an award-winning Iranian-born Australian poet. He migrated to Australia after living through the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, and is a writer of poetry, criticism and plays. The major themes of his works are history, dissent and the dilemmas of religion and spirituality. He holds a PhD in writing from Deakin University Melbourne, and this is his second book. He is currently living and teaching writing in China.
In its multiple rendering, you can read [eliXir: a story in poetry]
as a play, then as a story, then experience it as a poem, at
different points and very often simultaneously. Alizadeh does his
tale with speed while sucking in our senses with a compelling
simplicity that awes with admiration. The pace is varied and the
style indicates a craft of narrative economy.
*TEXT: The Journal of Australian Association of Writing
Programs*
[Alizadeh’s] eliXir – like the fabled liquor sought by alchemists
from which [it] takes its name – is a potent concoction … its
after-effects are as powerful as they are thought provoking.
*Beat*
A talent to watch.
*About Poetry.com*
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