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Kaleem Hawa

Kaleem Hawa has written about art, film, and literature for the New York Review of Books, The Nation, and Artforum, among others.



Articles Available Online


Hating it Lush: On Tel Aviv

Essay

May 2023

Kaleem Hawa

Essay

May 2023

I   They made the desert bloom, tall sparkling towers and clean Bauhaus lines, and apple-ring acacias, and teal blue shuttle buses, and stock...

Poetry

Issue No. 28

Three poems from issue 28

Sarah Barnsley

Valzhyna Mort

Kaleem Hawa

Poetry

Issue No. 28

Valzhyna Mort, ‘Music for Girl’s Voice and Bison’   Sarah Barnsley, ‘Virginia Woolf Has Fallen Over’   Kaleem Hawa,...

for the spirit of Jonathan Harvey   There was a fisherman, who lived in a village on a great bay, into which he and the other fishermen of the village would take their boats out every morning to let fall their nets The bay was so sheltered, so calm, that the fishermen could call to one another over the water, their voices clear in the damp air, especially on a spring morning such as this was, with white mist hanging over the sea and a faint crescent moon still visible on the wide blue-grey sky They had not long been out this morning Not long at all Now was no time to be heading home, but he saw them, all the rest, his friends, turn their prows back towards the village He shouted to them, but received no answer   Soon he was alone   On a whim he decided to aim for the other side of the bay from the village, a place where pinewoods came down to the sand   He landed, pulled his boat up onto the crunching beach and then, when that was done, became aware of music, something between the shimmering chime of small bells and the luminous breath of panpipes There were also flowers floating down, he could not tell from where, flowers of colours he had never seen before And there was a growing fragrance, an infinite sweetness   Then he saw it, iridescent and caught in the branches of one of the trees ahead, undulating in the breeze and turning from gold to ultramarine to purple to deep green As he walked slowly towards it the scent grew, and after he had reached up and taken it out of the tree he placed it against his face, its exquisite softness, how it seemed to be cool and warm at the same time, how colours slowly moved through it, how it smelt of lavender and oranges and anis and walnut leaves and the neck of his beloved   Stop, said the spirit-being That cloak is mine That feather cloak is mine   I found it, said the fisherman   You cannot wear

Contributor

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa

Contributor

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa has written about art, film, and literature for the New York Review of Books, The Nation, and...

after Mahmoud Darwish    Why is a boy an exclamation,  and why are his dead a period?,  why do his sinews tighten when he sees  a Palestinian body? Does his vision narrow  because of their flight,  or because their world is raining with salt?  Why is a boy with a gun different  from a boy with a jail cell?,  if the tools of rupture are our arms for  repurposing the body, and the arms of  the state are our means of repurposing the male,  are we finally useful and breathing and nervous…?  Does the white mean Night’s arrival?,  or does night signal the white’s escape?,  and when that white city boy becomes  a White City man,  does the hate in his heart subside?,  or does it become an ellipses,  a Bauhaus history of stories started  and left unfinished 
You Arrive at A White Checkpoint and Emerge Unscathed

Prize Entry

November 2019

Kaleem Hawa


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poetry

Issue No. 14

Interrogations

Rebecca Tamás

poetry

Issue No. 14

INTERROGATION (1)     Are you a witch?   Are you   Have you had relations with the devil?...

feature

Issue No. 2

Gay Madonnas in Montevergine: The Feast of Mamma Schiavona

Annabel Howard

feature

Issue No. 2

We are crowded into the medium-sized piazza before the sanctuary of Montevergine. There is no town or village; it...

fiction

January 2016

Eight Minutes and Nineteen Seconds

Georgi Gospodinov

TR. Angela Rodel

fiction

January 2016

The minute you start reading this, the sun may already have gone out, but you won’t know it yet....

 

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