Red Cherry on a White-Tiled Floor

Maram Al-Massri was born in Latakia, Syria, and has lived in France since 1982. She has published three collections in Arabic, and her poems have been translated into many languages, with books published in French and Spanish.

"'Maram al-Massri relates the most subtle events of her life - a life completely rooted in the unassuaged anxiety of love, a love from which neither desire nor fear nor tenderness are absent; she tells of her joy in being the object of somebody's advances, or her disappointment when she is not. She tells of the violence of a moment of passionate intensity or the bittersweet duration of a memory...It's only love that's worth living for, says Maram, and love is always about to leave...All that remains is the awful, muffled beating of this heart or, still lighter and distinct, the sound of footsteps in the garden, footprints barely visible in the sand, as if the soul had bare feet, and was walking' - Salah Stetie; 'Maram al-Massri needs only certain mots justes, certain utterances, to evoke the intimacles of love, the simplest as well as those most charged with secrecy and meaning. Both precise and dreamy, Maram al-Massri's intimate poetry gives a voice to the soft light which illuminates the wonder of being in love' - Lionel Ray"