The Square Root of Beirut by Omar Sabbagh

The Square Root of Beirut

Following the critically acclaimed debut, My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint, Lebanese-British poet Omar Sabbagh delivers an outstanding second collection. Widely published in highly respected journals such as 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, Sabbagh’s poetry brings together literary allusion with an intelligent and questing spirit.

Praise for Omar 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.
Martin Crucefix

Omar Sabbagh is a young 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, followed by a PhD in English Literature at King’s College London. He currently lectures in creative writing in Beirut.