The Baboons of Hada

Written over a period of 30 years, this precise and generous poetry opens with an exuberant bestiary of spiders, starfish, penguins, snakes, and contemplative baboons. The collection then moves on to explore a world of intricate wonders and memories: the grandeur of noses, the mayonnaise tornado whipped up by a kitchen whisk, and the gossip gravediggers whisper to the dead. Finally, the poet's interest in classical Islam is invoked through the incorporation of a flamboyant, medieval caliph and the greatest of Arab poets, al-Mutanabbi.

Eric Ormsby is the Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and a former professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. His poetry has appeared in most of the major journals in Canada, England, and the U.S., including The New Yorker, The New Republic, Paris Review, Descant, and Parnassus. His first collection, Bavarian Shrine and Other Poems, won the QSPELL Poetry Prize, and Time’s Covenant.