Amman - Poet Thuraya Ibrahim has released a poetry collection titled "On the Banks of Jasmine and Tenderness," which includes a set of poems on love, longing, loyalty and belonging, alongside human, national and social concerns and spiritual reflections.
اضافة اعلان
The collection's texts range between personal experience, recollections of memories and human relationships, and expressions of pride in the homeland, identity and the Arabic language, in a poetic experience drawing its themes from the details of life and human emotion.
In his introduction to the collection, critic Samir Al Yousef notes that poetry is not limited to expressing what we feel. It consists in finding a language that gives feelings the power to endure, and in turning human experiences, with their joy, pain, longing and reflection, into words that pass from the self to others. In his view, poetry is an attempt to preserve what passes and recover what is absent, and to listen to that hidden voice that dwells within a person and gives them the ability to see life with its beauty, brokenness, hope and disappointment.
Al Yousef said: "The collection's title draws the reader in with its emotional connotations. Banks suggest crossing and meeting between movement and stillness, and between experience and memory. Jasmine evokes beauty, purity and affection, while tenderness creates an atmosphere of intimacy, softness and human warmth. The title thus appears as an entry point into a poetic world in which feelings bloom, memories keep their fragrance, and longing finds in the poem a refuge from the harshness of absence and distance."
The collection's themes are varied, but an emotional thread unites them: love, loyalty, belonging, and reflection on life, the individual and the homeland. The poet draws on her personal experiences to touch on broader human concerns, using poetry as a means of expressing the self and opening up to others.
In poems of love and longing, the heart appears as a repository of memory, a place where the pleasure of meeting and the bitterness of waiting coexist. In the poem "The Absent Beloved," distance becomes an experience that seizes time and rearranges the details of life around the beloved's absence. The poet says: "The years turn and life passes," yet the passing of time does not tear loyalty to the beloved out of the heart, nor erase the absent one's trace from memory.
This feeling continues in the poems "What Is Wrong with My Heart," "Obsessions" and "Reproach," in which the self oscillates between longing and confusion, between revisiting the past and trying to understand the present. These texts reveal an inner world confronting its own questions and reflecting on the psychological effects that love, absence and the changes of time leave behind.
The emotional circle widens to include family and human bonds. In the poem "In Memory of the Beloved Aunt Khadija Abu Hamad," the poet recalls the image of a woman who has passed away but whose influence remains alive in the heart, evoking meanings of love, honesty and devotion. In "To Zaydoun," she expresses the pain of motherhood in the face of separation, drawing on everyday details, from the room and clothes to notebooks and books, to make objects witnesses to the absent son's presence. Here, longing goes beyond personal experience to become a human feeling that touches the emotions of every mother whose heart is burdened by parting.
In another context, loyalty appears in the poems "Dr. Shadan" and "Thanks and Gratitude to Dr. Yacoub Al Hammadi," in which the poet celebrates knowledge and good character and expresses gratitude to people who left a good mark on others' lives. Poetry here is not limited to personal confession. It becomes a means of acknowledging kindness and immortalizing noble acts.
From the personal sphere, the poet moves to the space of homeland, dignity and freedom. In the poem "To You, O Jerusalem," she addresses the city with all it represents of history, identity, religious and human memory, blending feelings of pain and sorrow with a questioning of conscience in the face of what it suffers. In this text, Jerusalem is not a distant place, but a cause that tests the sincerity of belonging and the sense of responsibility.
In "The Story of a Martyr," the poet evokes national pain and gives sacrifice a meaning tied to dignity and the refusal of defeat, while in "Children's Determination" she turns toward the future, invoking the values of learning, work and cooperation in building tomorrow. Pain and hope thus sit side by side, with the human being and their will at the center of this vision.
The poem "Unity of Goodness" presents love as a social force that brings people together and drives them to cooperate and build. Images of roses, colors and breezes become symbols of optimism and solidarity, affirming that goodness is not merely a moral value, but a practice whose impact is felt in society. The poem gains added significance from its date, given as 1992, which points to the poet's early concern with social issues.
The horizon is completed by the poem "The Arabic Language," which celebrates the language as a vessel of identity, culture and heritage, not merely a means of communication. Through it, the poet expresses her pride in her language and calls for preserving it and strengthening its status.
Spiritual reflections are also present in the collection, as in the poem "Self-Talk," in which the text becomes an inner dialogue between desires and the voice of reason and conscience. The self appears in a state of review and striving, seeking guidance and tranquility, and aware of its responsibility for its choices.
Through these themes, the poet appears closely connected to the details and occasions of life. She draws her poetic material from a dear person, a lasting memory, a moment deserving of thanks, or a national cause that troubles the conscience. This connection to experience gives her texts an emotional character and makes them resemble pages of a human biography, shaped by the poet in the language of feeling and loyalty.
"On the Banks of Jasmine and Tenderness" is not merely a scattering of poems. It is a space where delicacy and pain coexist, where longing meets hope, and where personal experience intertwines with human and national concerns. Despite the diversity of its subjects, love, loyalty, dignity and goodness remain the emotional thread that binds its texts together.
Because this collection is the first and only poetry publication by Thuraya Ibrahim, it marks a milestone in her literary journey, allowing her inner world to reach beyond the self into the realm of reading and reception. The literary value of an experience is measured not by its reach alone, but by its sincerity and its ability to touch readers' emotions and leave a mark on them.
Al Yousef concludes that the story on the banks of this collection does not end with its last poem, but remains open to the hope of a future poetic experience bringing more maturity and renewal, and continuing to plant the fragrance of jasmine in memory and the warmth of tenderness in hearts.
Source: Al-Ghad. Reporting by: Aziza Ali
