Andalusia

Poetry. Translation. The book is a collection of Arabic-Andalusian poems; intimate moments which the author encountered in a group of early writings from the Andalusian area of Spain, and to which she eloquently responds. Her original poems appear, as well as the poems in Arabic, and translations in Spanish and English.

"Federico Garcia Lorca's last book, published posthumously, Diván del Tamarit, was inspired by Spanish translations from the medieval Arabic poets of Al- Andalus. The same passionate inspiration evokes these new poems by Susan Thackrey, only this time they come transformed, constructed and reconstructed. There are the poems from the Arabic; then the Spanish translations by scholar and literary critic Emilio Gomez Garcia; then Thackrey's devastatingly concise translations from Spanish to English; and, lastly and also firstly, her poems in response to the Andalusian work. Here are traces upon violent traces of memory, heart's openness, the apparition of the beloved, visions of nostalgia in the east wind—in short, the vernacular love lyric in multiple languages and eras."—Norma Cole