Fady Joudah

Textu Fady Joudah

"Joudah's poetry thrives on dramatic shifts in perspective, on continually challenging received notions."?The Guardian

Emerging in the era of tweets and text messages, poet Fady Joudah has invented a new poetic form: textu. The "u" in textu echoes the one in haiku, and also emphasizes the intimate you. A textu poem has a single rule: be exactly 160 characters long. As theme, form, and style are wide opened, a textu reveals new possibilities and poetry in unexpected ways.

Textu

Your spine a river into the forest
can't tell the neurons for the trees

I light & light
you up with sound profile

threading the image habit
of pleasure

Conscience

When we learn how an infant in the womb
Sleeps precisely in a parent's pose

say with fist closed
pillowing the temple

What will become
of the poem

Fady Joudah is a poet, translator, and emergency room physician. His first book, The Earth in the Attic, won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He lives near Houston, Texas.