My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint by Omar Sabbagh

UK £7.99 Europe £8.99 rest of world £9.50

Extract (download)

Debut collection from outstanding Lebanese/British poet.

Drawing together disparate worlds: the Lebanese and the Western; the academic, brimming with literary allusion, and the soul raw with suffering; the political and the personal, Omar Sabbagh weaves lyrical, intelligent pieces that range over family relationships, love, passion and war, always with something new to say and a distinctive way of saying it. Powerful, heartfelt, but beautifully controlled and crafted, Sabbagh is a new voice who will make an extraordinary mark on the poetry world.

Praise for Sabbagh’s poetry

He is very, very able, and I think very interesting as a cross-cultural phenomenon (I don’t mean in ANY tokenistic way, I mean in the way he fuses Western liberal education and home experience).  He writes in a range of genres, not just poetry – he’s incredibly bright, full of energy and assiduity. I warmly recommend him.

Fiona Sampson

Sabbagh writes brilliantly about alienation from country and family; even his love poems are often troubled and this makes for a distinctively modern sensibility.  Bristling and unsentimental, his work is inhabited by a variety of voices that, on occasion, take flight in more lyrical passages suggestive of the ageless longing “To be somehow, in some way better / At dusk / Than you were at dawn” (‘Some Rules of Thumb’)

Martyn Crucefix

Omar Sabbagh is a distinct presence and a powerful voice: a young poet worthy of attention.

Professor Philip Davis, The Reader

Omar Sabbagh is a 29 year old Lebanese/British emerging poet, who completed his MA in creative and life writing at Goldsmiths in 2007, where he studied under Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review and is currently completing a PhD in English Literature at King’s College London. Widely published in literary journals in the UK including Agenda, Agenda Online Broadsheets, Envoi, The London Magazine, The New Writer, PN Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Reader, Stand, The Warwick Review and The Goldfish Anthology.