Habibi: The diwam of Alim Maghrebi

Habibi, the love poems of the Moroccan poet Alim Maghrebi, is the latest in a series of David Solway's poetic 'translations,' dating from Andreas Karavis'Saracen Islandand including Nesmine Rifat'sPallikari, Rhys Savarin'sReaching for Clear, Bartholomew the Englishman'sThe Properties of Things, and Dov Ben-Zamir'sNew Wine, Old Bottles, the latter still in manuscript. These are what Solway calls his 'ostensibles,' poetic voices and artifacts which he regards as constituting an extended trope or metaphor of the desire for transformation.