I have crossed lands
Wearing dark crowns
Where the sun should be.
from ‘Glow’ *** Marial Awendit dares to dream and to share his dreams, drawing us into a world of searing contrasts – fire and water, beauty and ugliness, love and rage, darkness and light, war and resistance, God and the devil. In the process he considers profound, existential questions. What is the purpose of suffering? How do we define freedom? Can hope flower from pain? Surreal images leap off the page to startle our perceptions and embed themselves in our consciousness. The poems reverberate with a haunting musicality, floating like water lilies on the Nile, pulsing like flames in the desert night. – Marian Christie