Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Omar Sakr

Omar Sakr

Omar Sakr is an award-winning poet born and raised in Western Sydney to Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants. He is the author of These Wild Houses (Cordite, 2017) and The Lost Arabs (UQP, 2019), which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry.

'What Distance Burns', a poem by Omar Sakr

June 2021, no. 432 26 May 2021
Smoke softens the trees, a swift omen scented before seen.It warps what it brings, from the sun to grief. I stir on the stoop I rent. All around me wasps shimmy,Orange alphabet of knives. I call them father and son Until my tongue blisters. I chew the queen into bitsAnd for a moment, we understand each other Her children and I, the way a believer understands God:As a largeness capable of being ... (read more)