A collection of poetry inspired by Rumi, Islam and other Persian Sufi poets. The collection includes award winning poetry from the UK Muslim Writers Awards 2007 -2010 and contemporary Islamic themed poetry from across the UK.Supported by the Arts Council England.Foreword by Chris Firth:Rumi is alleged to have said, ‘All talk is a form of boasting.’In light of his wisdom, this introduction will be short.Some of the poets published here are Muslims, some are not. Some are previously published poets; some are published here for the first time.The only requirement for consideration and inclusion in this book was that there had to be some form of inspiration or influence from the Persian poets such as Rumi, Omar, Attar, Saadi and Hafez, or from the Islamic faith and its cultural traditions.There was no particular well thought out logic or marketing strategy to this; it was just an idea, an inspiration, and perhaps, more importantly, from a feeling of the heart. Poetry and music will always bring people together, whatever their professed faith, beliefs or chosen religion.From an editorial point of view, the touch and intervention here has been ‘light’ – a suggestion here, a tweak there, some tightening of layout and punctuation throughout to meet the demands of limited space. It seemed more important that the voice and expression of the writers emerged rather than every comma and placement of capital letter met the ever shifting universal required standards of English grammatical accuracy.Grammatical Purists, please accept our apologies for any annoyances we may here accidentally provoke. Also, despite the book title, ‘experts’ of the ghazal form will note that, technically speaking, there are very few disciplined, form-adhering ghazals in the collection. The good intention (niyyah) is there though, so please forgive our liberty in using this term in the title. We have decided not to numerically order the pages of this book, hence avoiding the Western inclination to rank, order and numerically categorize. Open the book anywhere to begin. Here is a bridge – please, cross it.Here is a cup – please, drink deep, then pass it on.We hope that you will enjoy the many beautiful poems and lyrics we offer to you here.
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