SHAHEEN DIL



In The Boat-Maker’s Art, Shaheen Dil displays the whole range of poetics and of her culturally-engaged imagination. Dreamy and full of sensibility, these poems turn with the lightest of touches to reveal the wit and allusion that underpins every description.

Dil is a poet who eschews the tired gestures of confessional verse to share with us a deeply-felt view of the human world itself. In her vision contemporary experience is still richly meaningful and connected through myth and religion with past and future human lives.
Fiona Sampson, MBE, FRSL, is one of the UK’s leading poets and writers. Her work has been translated into 37 languages. Her honors include: the European Lyric Atlas Prize, the Naim Frasheri International Laureateship, and the Wales Poetry Book of the Year.









Time and again this impressive poetic venture asks Faustian questions about the meaning and coherence of life, only to acknowledge the deficiency of all predetermined responses to its perpetual crises, including the experience of loss. In a sense, the individual poems are variations of an existential longing for insight and cognition, which comes on a journey through poetry and strives to open onto new horizons of understanding.

Dr. Klaus D. Post, University of Augsburg, Germany, on Acts of Deference.