The Neverfield
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The Neverfield is work which insists on itself. It is a poetry of a shining quality from a poet whose voice is sure and unafraid.
– Lucille Clifton
The Neverfield is an epic journey, a passionate search for beauty and truth. If beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, the poems in this volume lead us once again to that realization. The Neverfield is an enchanting work, sharing with us a poet's true vision.
– Rudolfo Anaya
Nathalie Handal's poems in her collection The Neverfield are wide as breath, lyrically linked as an elegantly stitched Palestinian bodice, the first time we hear them.
– Naomi Shihab Nye
As I turned the pages of this work, I was reminded of how vast the universe is. The Neverfield is everlasting by nature. After reading it, I breathed deeply and praised the word. This is a holistic piece of work.
– Benjamin Zephaniah
This is an ambitious debut. Nathalie Handal embarks on her poetic career with a lyric epic utilizing intriguing surreal imagery and a passionate tone to explore the existential bewilderment of her exile.
– Khaled Mattawa
The Neverfield is reminiscent of some of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Bunuel, and Jean-Luc Godard in its use of evocative imagery and its dreamlike, nonlinear narrative flow. It is, however, not so much about sociopolitical critique as it a bout testimony and affirmation. Indeed, the work echoes themes also reflected in the poems of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Josey Foo, and Eileen Tabios in evoking ideas of poetry/language as home and claiming one's voice as an affirmation of self. And like some of Lee Young-Li's longer poems, it is personal and intimate in its introspection and more subtle eroticism, yet global in scope and grounded in history. – Lori Tsang, Multicultural Review
Lucid, vibrant, and charged, Nathalie Handal’s poetry is suffused with a sense of place and culture. Her writing in international in scope, its soul is deeply alive.
– Diana Abu-Jaber
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> Multicultural Review
> The Washington Report
> World Literature Today
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