ODE TO MY BELOVED is written in two parts. Book one consists of eighty God inspired poems that were written for the Authors (The Lord and Barbara) Beloved. The book conveys a prophetic union between the co-author (Barbara) and a Promised spouse. God is mentioned as the co-authors Holy Spouse, who has revealed to Barbara her union with Him, as His Spiritual Bride. Book two contains eighty God inspired poems also, with additional excerpts and poems from Barbaras other literary works. BARBARA SPEAKING TO HER BELOVED I will follow your lead, O chosen one, into the Streets of Happiness and Eternal Bliss. I will follow your lead, O chosen one, with the Seal of His Holy Kiss. I will follow you, O chosen son of The Holy Trinity, into the Realm of Spiritual Tranquility. I will follow your lead, into The Arms of our Perfect King JESUS. I will follow your lead, into the Heavens that released us. I will follow you, O chosen one, into the Heart of The Only True God. I will follow your lead, O chosen son, with the Approval of His Love. I will follow you, O chosen one, into the Gates of Eternal Glory. I will follow your lead, into the Realm of The Greatest Story. I will follow you, O chosen one, into the Realm that gave birth to our love. I will follow you, O chosen one, to our Paradise above. I will follow you, O Blessed and Beloved one, into the Heavenly Lilies. I will follow you, O chosen one, Throughout Eternity. May you continue following The Holy Trinity, into The Gates of Paradise, O well loved one.

Gloria Tomatoe Serobe, née Ndaliso, married Gaur Serobe in 1987, following a six-month courtship. And so began Gloria's 26-year relationship with her mother-in-law, Winnie Serobe. Winnie Serobe was born in Thaba 'Nchu in 1933, in a deeply racialised South Africa. Yet she transcended all the barriers put in place by the South African government, and society at large, to become a nurse, midwife, community builder, social entrepreneur and leader. In the course of her marriage to Andrew Serobe, for 40 years, during which they became parents to five children, she was never only a wife and a mother. This book is Gloria's ode of love, honour and respect to her mother-in-law, whom she referred to as Mama. It brings to life the story of a Winnie Serobe, who we may not read about when we look at the heroes and heroines of this country, but who served those around her every day. She remains memorialised in the hearts and minds of those for whom she fought for the right to be educated; buried with dignity; and provided with the best quality healthcare – particularly for mothers and their unborn and new-born babies. Throughout her remarkable life, Winnie Serobe 'saw', 'heard', and homed some of the most vulnerable, stigmatised, ostracised and perhaps forgotten members of her community. Throughout this life well lived, she nurtured and mentored Gloria as a makoti of the Serobe family. She reframed marriage, family and service for the young Gloria, lessons which Gloria shares in the pages of this book. Gloria Tomatoe Serobe is a founding member and CEO of WIPHOLD and is a leading activist for community upliftment, the empowerment of women, and the sustainable transformation of the South African economic landscape. She has been recognised for her leadership in business and community activism with numerous awards, and a number of honorary degrees.

Unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day. In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish—offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt’s Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco, selected by Tyehimba Jess for the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, is an aching tribute to the power and precarity of queer love. In small-town Mississippi, before the aughts, a child “assigned ‘woman’” and a boy “forced to call / himself a girl” love one another—from afar, behind closed doors, in motels. The child survives an injurious mother and the beast-shaped men she brings home; the boy becomes a soldier. Years later, the boy—the eponymous beloved, Missy—dies by suicide, kicking up a riptide of memory. This is where K. Iver writes, at the confluence of love poem and elegy. “I say to the water if you were here, / you’d be here.” With cinematic precision, they conjure dorm-room landlines, the lingering sweetness of shared candy, a ballet strap and “soft / fingers tracing it, afraid to touch / the skin.” They punctuate depictions of familial abuse and the cruel politics of the Deep South with fairy tales: a girl who endures abuse refusing to grow into a mother who inflicts it herself, queer youth kissing fearlessly, bodies transcending the violence of a reductive gender binary. In these fantasies, “there’s no / reason to leave town no hidden / torches waiting for us to fall asleep.” Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco sees us through a particular kind of grief—one so relentless, it’s precious. It presses us, also, to continue advocating for a world in which queer love fantasies become reality and queer love poems “swaddle the impossible / contours of joy.”

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded pits the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish—offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on “rural” verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt’s countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbī. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era. An English-only edition.

Since Carol-la’s first book, Ode to Peanut M&M’s, Carol-la continues to meander through the ruins of her memories and it is a bittersweet surrender. At times, Tibet is fresh and untouched by forgetfulness. A recent trip to Ireland was beckoned by a leprechaun, who met Carol-la on a Sky Burial site in Tibet, before she met Tsedor-la. Her poetry writing is her means to pursue the unknown and make it visible. She speaks of her path between the veil of living and dying and transcending grief. Her book is a legacy of who she is today.