Once I Forget

Written with urgency out of a war-time Beirut, this poetry collection registers the griefs and the heroism of the Lebanese, under siege yet again. Sabbagh lends his lyrical voice here, to give a voice to the voiceless, trying to find some harmonic sense out of catastrophe. This book will compel readers, both Lebanese and those with any kind of human heart. While much of the work was written swiftly, on impulse, and almost like, as one of the poem’s title’s has it, a ‘War Diary,’ in verse, this work aims nonetheless to last in its significance and resonance at a time when the world as a whole (let alone Lebanon herself) has become so unpredictable, so fickle and so perilous. Night Settles Upon The City aims to be a worthwhile addition to the contemporary literature of war and, more specifically, to the literary representations of the modern Lebanese reality and experience.

Omar Sabbagh is a poet who is privileged to write about war and destruction from the relative safety of his study. But this double-edged illusion is insidious — mental and emotional inwardly, and physical for those who are directly under attack. It is visceral, political, heart-wrenching — yet the poet seeks out light and hope through the act of writing, for the sake of ownership and sharing. He may say that “I cannot read minds and nor / will I ever wish to”, but he writes for the importance of record-keeping, seeking solace, both private and public — as the Night Settles Upon The City of Beirut.
— Sudeep Sen, Winner of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize

Omar Sabbagh has long brought us a world in which personal experience stitches a hyphen between the eastern Mediterranean and the northerly British archipelago. Now he makes the tension inherent within that richness explicit, in a love-letter to his family and home city of Beirut. Written while the ‘night’ of war ‘settles upon the city’, his introductory ‘Thoughts’ show us how unthinkable war remains, even when it arrives on the doorstep. This is a book of witness to what cannot happen, and yet does.
– Fiona Sampson, Professor Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL.Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning WW Norton 2022 – Washington Post Book of the Year, New York Times Editors’ Choice, finalist Plutarch Prize, finalist PEN Jacqueline Bograd Award, Sunday Times Paperback of the year.

The poet Omar Sabbagh lives in Beirut. His voice is playful, almost surreal at times. He talks of ‘the hairbrained monocle of war’ and suggests that if you live long enough in a place like Beirut ‘laughter becomes a lover’s distance-giving kiss’. Night Settles Upon the City offers us a poetry that is neither ideological nor partisan, not of the frontline but of a deeply threatened warzone. Its terms are easy-going, sorrowful, humane, formally intelligent and tinged with apprehension. It is humanity being human. Reading it is relief and hope.’
— George Szirtes FRSL, Eliot Prize winner.