The Glimmer

Author: Quraishi, Shazea

Literature & literary studies

Published on 15 September 2022 by Bloodaxe Books Ltd in the United Kingdom.

The Glimmer is a meditation on the time-span of life illuminated by many voices. In an artists' colony in Mexico, a taxidermist tends animals in their after-life, contemplating what remains of us after death. Among the artists she encounters are a painter of miniatures, a war photographer, a light artist, a ghazal singer, and dancers from Tanzteater Wuppertal, as they reflect on the impulse to make work and meaning in a world where value is increasingly monetised.

Within the extended narrative are self-contained poems ranging in form from syllabics and ghazals to OULIPO-inspired anagram poems, drawing on found text and verbatim speech to bring a choir of voices to life. The title work is followed by two elegies.

The Glimmer is Shazea Quraishi's second full-length book of poetry, following her debut, The Art of Scratching.