A Queen of No Ordinary Realms
"Naveed Alam's realms emerge from ancient, courtly poetic traditions of the Middle East to speak for the transnational twenty-first century. The personae of the poems move through a global marginalized world that stretches from the Silk Road to cyberspace, from the seraglios of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights to the slums of the Developing World. The poet's uncanny ability to mythologize the everyday mysteries of human relationships transforms these poems into a haunting Book of Journeys in which safari is the steady state and wandering is a permanent address." (Carolyne Wright)