Emblem Nadia Alkowkabani [Abdullah’s Secrets] by Habib Selmi

[Abdullah’s Secrets] by Habib Selmi

The Nowhere Man depicts a London convulsed by fear and bitterness

It has to/be done

as their youthful dreams disintegrate alongside the social justice they hoped for

Much of the book displays an ambivalence towards the land and its rituals

Emblem Nadia Alkowkabani [Abdullah’s Secrets] by Habib SelmiEmblem is the debut collection from Lucy Mercer, winner of the inaugural White Review Poet's Prize. This is a book of ecological poetics, interested in exploring the changing symbols of the natural world in literature. Emblem revitalises this forgotten hybrid form in the present as a frame to contemplate the obscurities of motherhood, faith and the interior. In ghostly conversation with the sixteenth century emblematist Andrea Alciato a witness to a