Owl Of Pines

About the Book

Śūnyatā of Owl Of Pines is the 5th book of poetry by Saad Ali. It’s the first installment in Ali’s trilogy of Owl Of Pines. This book is an homage to the Śūnyatā i.e. emptiness which is the creator, destroyer, proliferator, and container of existence itself. On this occasion, the vers libres, prose poems, and ekphrases are born out of the interactions and integrations of the elements and forces—natural, human, and non-human—that live between the spaces; spaces, where everything exists i.e. nature, human beings and beasts alike; spaces that we take for granted and perceive to be invisible. Invariably, this book is an homage to the three distinct forms of the literary art i.e. vers libre, prose poem, and ekphrasis. Ali’s trademark tools i.e. contemplation and satire adopt the respective forms to reflect upon the multifaceted human condition in the contemporary human society, and the intricacies and niceties of existence itself. As always, the book is an open invitation to everyone to observe such a contemplation at the individual and collective level, too.

About the Author

SAAD ALI (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) is an existential philosopher, poet, and translator. He has been educated and brought up in Pakistan and the UK. He earned his BSc and MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. By profession, Ali is a consultant (marketing, communications and research), educator, and lecturer/trainer/mentor. Ali possesses a broader worldview, which is a result of his experiences gained from having lived in a variety of cultural settings such as Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Australasia. The cogs of his existential machinery are oiled by the muses of arts. He was embraced by the muses of art and poetry in his infancy i.e. at the raw age of 12. The main components of his poetic discourse include: contemplation and satire. Some of his influences include: Vayasa, Homer, Ovid, Saadi, Rumi, Ghalib, Nietzsche and Tagore—to name a few. Previously, he has authored four books of poetry i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (2019), Ekphrases: Book One (2020) and Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα (2020). He is a regular contributor at The Ekphrastic Review—a premier journal for ekphrastic verse and prose. His current projects include: translating the poetry of Bulleh Shah (Sufi poet), Allama Muhammad Iqbal (philosopher poet) and Faiz Ahmad Faiz (philosopher poet) from the Punjabi, Urdu and Farsi (Persian) languages into the English language. He is fond of travelling by train and exploring cities/towns on foot. He takes a great amount of interest in learning different languages. In particular, he appreciates the Persian, Chinese and Greek cuisines. His favourite sport is putting his gray matter to test at chess. To know more about Ali and his work, please visit his website at https://www.saadalipoetry.com, or his Author Page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/owlofpines.