The Promised Land

<p><i>While half the world swept west,</i><br><i>we trickled eastward, one by one,</i><br><i>single-file, like fugitives. Next stop:</i><br><i>Abu Dhabi, where my father had</i><i> a job,</i><br><br><i>and money, for the first time </i><i>in years</i> . . .<br><br>__________________________________________________<br><br>Flitting from the mud-soaked floors of Venice to the glittering, towering constructions of the Abu Dhabi of his childhood and early adulthood, from present-day London to North America, André Naffis-Sahely's bracingly plain-spoken first collection gathers portraits of promised lands and those who go in search of them: labourers, travellers, dreamers; the hopeful and the dispossessed. <br><br>'Naffis-Sahely's poems usher the reader in to a world of reversals and risk . . . His narratives hold memory to account'<br>DAVID HARSENT</p> <p><i>While half the world swept west,</i><br><i>we trickled eastward, one by one,</i><br><i>single-file, like fugitives. Next stop:</i><br><i>Abu Dhabi, where my father had</i><i> a job,</i><br><br><i>and money, for the first time </i><i>in years</i> . . .<br><br>__________________________________________________<br><br>Flitting from the mud-soaked floors of Venice to the glittering, towering constructions of the Abu Dhabi of his childhood and early adulthood, from present-day London to North America, André Naffis-Sahely's bracingly plain-spoken first collection gathers portraits of promised lands and those who go in search of them: labourers, travellers, dreamers; the hopeful and the dispossessed. <br><br>'Naffis-Sahely's poems usher the reader in to a world of reversals and risk . . . His narratives hold memory to account'<br>DAVID HARSENT</p>