Negative Space

Lleshanakus poems are full of objects and souls, transformed and given wings in Chagall-like metaphor (Sasha Dugdale, Poetry Nation Review)*Shortlist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize*Language arrived fragmentary / split in syllables / spasmodic / like code in times of war, writes Luljeta Lleshanaku in the title poem to her powerful new collection Negative Space. In these lines, personal biography disperses into the history of an entire generation that grew up under the oppressive dictatorship of the poets native Albania. For Lleshanaku, the unsaid, gestures make up the negative space that gives form to the woods / and to the mad womanthe silhouette of goddess Athena / wearing a pair of flip-flops / and an owl on top of a shoulder. It is the negative space that sketched my onomatopoeic profile / of body and shadow in an accidental encounter. Lleshanaku instills ordinary objects and placesgloves, used books, acupuncture needles, small-town train stationswith subtle humor and profound insight, as a child discovering a world in a grain of sand.