In her collection of poems, “As if it were Forgiveness,” Hoda Omran gives us a metaphor. Just as in some novels we find a dishonest narrator, in the collection’s poems we find a metaphor that deceives us, as it moves between the specific and the general smoothly and precisely. Which makes us wonder: Is “Hoda” inside the poems the poet? Or is it a metaphor for another woman who also happens to be Hoda?
Does the self scattered between the sections in the entire collection really belong to the poet? Or is it a mixture of the real and the imaginary - in a precise writing game - to produce those intense bursts of poetry, which we read, and we all find ourselves, in one way or another, between the lines of the poems, to be amazed and re-read again?
In her writing, Hoda relies on a rich linguistic dictionary, which she adapts, moving between diverse vocabulary and structures that have a distinctive imprint and an authentic poetic voice.
Hoda Omran is an Egyptian writer and poet, born in 1988. She studied political science at Cairo University, and is currently preparing her master’s thesis on cultural politics and feminist literature. Her poetry collection, “Naive and Centennial,” was published. His poems were translated into Swedish and English, and the novel “Hashish Orange Fish” in 2018, which received an “Afaq” grant, and was shortlisted in the Sawiris Prize 2021, and the poetry collection “Cairo,” which won the Helmy Salem Prize. The “Life of the Gamers” novel project, a novel for young people, won a 2021 Mofradat grant, and its correspondence with the Swedish literature teacher and poet Borjo Sahin was published in English in Kriter magazine.
