One Fish from the Rooftop

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

John Asfour’s third collection of poetry in English is a beautifully
produced volume full of evocative memories.

Asfour grew up in the small village of Aitaneat in Lebanon. At the age
of 14, he was blinded by a grenade during the Civil War of 1958. He
later emigrated to Canada, where he is probably best known for When the
Words Burn, an anthology of modern Arabic poetry he both edited and
translated. In One Fish from the Rooftop, he sensitively compares his
memories of life in Lebanon with the new world of Montreal of which he
is now a part. Life in the poet’s home, with its fast-food restaurants
and poverty, is juxtaposed with his painful, though rich, life in
Aitaneat, a village ravaged by war but redolent with history, family,
and local legend.

These poems are bittersweet, intensely lyrical, accessible, and
wonderfully ambivalent. Whether describing characters and scenes from
his memories of home or empathizing with the poor of Saint-Henri, Asfour
projects an openness and candor that immediately win the reader over to
his point of view.