Point!

Nasser Hussain is a Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University in the UK. His first book, boldface, was published in 2014. He holds a PhD in English from the University of York (UK), an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and a BA in English from Queen’s University.Nasser has had a number of occupations: treeplanter, wilderness guide, amateur restaurateur, and now academic and poet. He likes his new job best. For him, poems are best described as ‘language with a pattern,’ and much of his recent practice takes pleasure in finding new patterns to wonder at. SKY WRI TEI NGS is the first expression of a larger interest in mass transit, and is his attempt to find a literal and poetic intersection between two things that ‘move’ us (in this case, planes, and poems). He currently lives in Sheffield, UK.

‘A riotous delight, The Point is the next chapter in Nasser Hussain’s ongoing poetic project to unsettle our sense of what language is and what it can do. Working on a canvas at once minute and expansive, these poems play with ideas of scale, emphasis, and representation: reading them, I had the sense now of walking through a Borgesian gallery, now of flying through space, now of burrowing into my own body’s interior. Hussain should reach his widest audience yet with this fantastic blend of concrete experiment, dismantle-the-box wit, and philosophical excavation.’  – Sarah Howe, author of Foretokens‘I !!!! !!!! !!!!. !!!! !!! (Translation: I love this book. Read it!)’ – Simina Banu, author of I Will Get Up Off Of‘The exclamation mark is the mark of our hypersaturated zeitgeist! Even the exclamation mark needs an exclamation mark!! Or another!!! The exclamation mark presupposes the exclamation Luke! John! and Matthew! The reclamation mark! The friedclamation mark! The lamentlamation mark! The exclamation mark is the interrobang for our times since we no longer mark questions because these days it’s ALL! questions! And excalamity!! Nasser Hussain exclaims, reframes, inflames and amazes in his investigation of this most emphatic vatic mark! This book is a lark but it is also a harpy: What do we claim!? What do we exclaim!? What do we/can we make (mark) serious?! How does writing vie for attention and notate the spiking of our overstimulated amygdala?!?!  It’s all here!!!! That’s The Point! Beauty! Strangeness!! Charm!!! Truth!!!! Feasturize ™ on this and I dare you not to exclaim, “Three quarks for Nasser Hussain and his Muster Mark!!!!!”’  – Gary Barwin, author of Yiddish for Pirates‘A universal language in a good mood.’ – Aram Saroyan, author of Before I Forget: A Memoir (and Then Some)‘!!!!!!! !!! ! !!!!!!!!! !!’ – Derek Beaulieu, author of Surface Tension‘Confronting the sheer pointlessness of poetic wisdom for any given weighty moment, Nasser Hussain’s The Point is an ingeniously exclamatory reminder of the point of marking the journey!’ – Kimberly Campanello, author of An Interesting Detail‘Into our age of protest and complaint against global tyrannies comes this epic treatment of the zeitgeistiest of our punctuation marks, the punchiest of our tachygraphy. Nasser Hussain has imagined a satirical paean to the oddity and eloquence of the mercurial exclamation point in the most fascinating era of its usage. The Point is a witty, vibrant work of visual poetry that illuminates the contradictions of our reactivity to media culture as we swing between paralysis and overwhelm and spin in the vortex of the attention economy.  As the best poets do, Hussain renews our attention to language’s ample and exquisite capacity, knocking it out of the narrow furrows of habit. We have in him an effervescent and limber mind that darts between the traditions set by folks like the Canadians bpNichol, bill bissett, and Judith Copithorn, Americans Douglas Kearney and giovanni singleton, and the earlier Italian practitioners of Poesia Visiva. A smart, sharp book.’ – Divya Victor, author of CURB‘These explosions and interjections bring the wordless book to a state of excited eloquence. Drawing on the Expressionist style of Frans Masereel and the poetic legacy of bpNichol, Hussain works lexical magic in The Point.’  – Tanis MacDonald, author of The Daughter’s Way: Canadian Women’s Paternal ElegiesPraise for SKY WRI TEI NGS:‘While most of us use airport codes only functionally, Nasser Hussain uses them poetically. Out of the raw material of these unpromising nuggets, he has assembled, ingeniously, an entire book of poems. The Garden of Eden, it turns out, is always just a layover away.’ – The New York Times MagazinePraise for Love Language:‘These are poems that long to dismiss the lyric’s most recent pretty mask of polite propriety and instead take us to the lyric’s ancient roots. It started way back, the poet says, “when a cave person made a grunt,” to speak the name of a thing. Indeed. This is the lyric’s ancient pact with the world: to spin playful language into seriousness of giving things their names – what are we without this speaking, this tune? Hussain knows this and writes beautiful poems – and I, for one, am grateful.’ – Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic‘Think of “time as a lantern,” suggests Nasser Hussain, in these inimitable poems that take play seriously and allow seriousness to enter the room disguised as incantation. Hussain’s humour is never complacent; it is the opposite of a defence mechanism (we are encouraged to imagine such a thing) and wryly sidesteps the bad binary of conservative withdrawal as set against algorithm-envenomed hyperassertion. He puts into words a new masculinity maturer than we deserve, that acknowledges swerves of defiance to be inseparable from underswells of doubt.’ – Vidyan Ravinthiran, author of The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here‘Hussain’s poems both puzzle and illuminate, as he delivers answers in no-answers, clarity through absurdity. Can we break down the inanity of our modern lives with verve and levity? Yes, indeed. Love Language unveils the possibilities.’ – The Toronto Star‘Nasser Hussain moves toward a more expansive version of experimentation; in a time of physical lockdown, his pandemic poetics refuse to be confined. And so we have poems that repeat and hypnotize as English becomes more and more absurd. But most of all, we see a deep affection for language: its multiple meanings, the ways it makes us feel, and for the ways that language lets us talk about complicated things playfully, like love. Generously handing out tenderness like a child with a sack full of Valentine's Day cards, the poems of Love Language revel in love’s warm glow and make sure there's enough room for anyone to join.’ – CBC Books