Books :: First Book Competition

Winner of the 2014 First Book Competition from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 50 Water Dreams by Siwar Masannat, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, is now available for purchase on the publisher’s website.

Of his selection, Kaminsky says, “How lucky we are to find a poetry debut that isn’t afraid of ideas, of mysteries, of politics, of passion. How brave she is to say ‘I saw nobody coming so I went instead.’ And to dare us: ‘I want to put you in my revolution.’ Like Zbigniew Herbert, this poet wants ‘to hide you in my eyelids & the nation,’ like Venus Khoury-Ghata, she makes a mythological pastoral, a book of voices that speak for more than one person.”

Masannat’s writing can also be found in New Orleans Review, Gargoyle, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals.