Clean Ponds
A. Daniyal
Chapbook
First Printing - 25 Copies
Second Printing - 25 Copies
Third Printing - 125 Copies
Fourth Printing - 25 Copies
ISBN 978-1-990474-42-2
“With a singular energy and remarkable intelligence, the sixteen poems in Clean Ponds expose the shards of our broken, lonely cosmos. Daniyal’s powerful poetics express the collision of sharp outrage with deep humanity, culminating in a call for mercy. From the neon lights of Montréal to the shores of the Black Sea, from the Clean Ponds of Moscow to the site of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, the poet’s restless gaze and tantalizing imagery subvert the temptations to surrender to evil or overlook the enduring beauty of existence.”
— Cora Siré, poet, novelist, and author of five books including Fear the Mirror
A. Daniyal was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and grew up in a small town in the Alps of Italy. He moved to Toronto, Canada, after high school in 2008. He studied Political Science, Philosophy, and Slavic Studies, at York University and University of Toronto, with an exchange semester spent at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His student years were shaped by travel, languages, and literatures, leading him to live, study, and work in multiple countries including United States, Peru, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and to learn a dozen languages.
His work draws from a rich mosaic of global literary traditions and explores the zeitgeist, the human condition and the historical moment, cultural memory, and the passing of time, as well as the small, bittersweet details of everyday life. He writes primarily in English, but also in Italian, French, Spanish, and translates prose and poetry into English, French, and Italian from Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Urdu, and others.
His short stories, poems, and translations have appeared in The Polyglot, The Imagist, Ahoy Literary, Squid Lit, and elsewhere. He is currently working on his first novel about his trucking days across Canada and United States. Clean Ponds is his first chapbook of poetry with Cactus Press of Montreal.
You can find out more about him at www.adaniyal.ca .