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Writer's pictureBalkan Art Scene

Fahredin Shehu — Verses Eminating from Ancient Passages


Author: Hana Tiro

At the Cifte Hamam in Skopje.



Fahredin Shehu was born in Rahovec in Kosovo, in 1972. He graduated from Prishtina University with a degree in Oriental Studies and then an M.A. in Literature, and PhD in Sacral Aesthetics. In the last thirty years he operated as Independent Scientific Researcher in the field of World Spiritual Heritage and Sacral Esthetics.


Shehu's works are translated in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Greek, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Roma, Swedish, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Romanian, Mongolian, Chinese, Maltese, Frisian, Sicilian, Bengali, Bahasa.


Ismail Butera (musician and storyteller from USA) describes Shehu's poetry as follows:

"This is poetry that seemingly rises like a mist emanating from ancient realms and mystical

pathways. Fahredin composes like a bard of old, weaving verses as if they were musical

passages."


Fahredin Shehu’s published books include Nun, a collection of mystical poems (1996); Invisible Plurality, a book of poetical prose, (2000); Nektarina, a novel, transcendental epic (2004, Rozafa Prishtinë), Elemental 99, short poetical mystical stories (2006, Center for positive thinking, Prishinë); and Kun, a collection of transcendental lyrics (2007, LOGOS-A, Skopje, Macedonia); Dismantle of Hate, an e-book (2010, Ronin Press, London); Crystaline Echoes, poetry (hard copy and e-book 2011, Corpos Editora, Porto, Portugal); Pleroma’s Dew, poetry (hard copy and Kindle/ Amazon Edition, 2012 Inner Child Press, New York); Emerald Macadam, a collection of essays, columns, opinions, presentations, and academic papers on culture, art, spirituality (2012, Positive Initiative, Prishtina, Kosovo).


Shehu is a director of Balkan Literature sector of the Kosovo PEN Center, a founder and member of South European Literature Association in Sofia, Bulgaria, director of International Poetry Festival “Poetry and Wine”- Rahovec, Kosovo, and founder of Fund for Cultural Education and Heritage in Kosovo. He is also a Doctor Honoris Causa, Universum Academy Lugano, Switzerland, and Lifetime Academic Universum Academy, Lugano, Switzerland.

His awards range from Agim Ramadani, Stubëll, Kosovo, 2014, Naaji Naaman Prize for Poetry, Beirut, Lebanon, 2016, United Nations Asian Federation of Literary Art and Circles, The Six, ASEAN Internstional Chamber of Commerce Beijing, China, 2020, to Pulitzer Prize Nomination in 2017.




"The subtle contextualization of his personal poetry in the chronotope of the Medieval

Orient, in the kingdom of Ormus/Hormoz, whose etymology refers to the Zoroastrian deity of

Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom) is suggestive of a hypnotic setting. A retrospection of the soul. A

metempsychotic encounter with the like-minded, an encounter taken as pure faith, as an outburst

of the sacral. A memory led by the invisible hand of the unconscious. A poetic laboratory of

synesthesia – mixing senses, scents, sounds, colors, tastes, touches.

Fahredin Shehu’s poetry is the very touch of that sensitive cocktail that is his poetic

language. A reminiscence of the metaphysical quest for oneself by venturing into religious

symbolism. Shehu’s memory is not only his own. It has absorbed other people’s memories as

one’s own and vice versa. It seeks a world beyond this world, far from ephemeral differences and

divisions.

That is why Shehu’s poems are meditative, soothing, and their perfume is discrete. The

scent of jasmine comes from other times, not from our garden. Its melancholy is pleasant. The

past has its own charm – the more scents, sounds, images, tastes and touches it contains, the

more powerful it is. That is why it is a palimpsest. Memory turned into word, into verse, into

poetry."

Katica Kulavkova, Academic, PhD in Comparative Literature-Sorbonne, Poet, Vice-

President PEN Global, Skopje, Macedonia.


"Goethe’s poems were mainly inspired by the romantic Sufi poems of Hafiz, bountiful in spiritual

contemplation. In the Eastern poetry (such as Chinese, Indian, Persian, Javanese, etc), there is

one reality of poetry is its function as aesthetic mode to express contemplation of one’s spiritual

experiences. Eastern poets believe that a true poet never indulge with the reality of daily life and

he always yearns for her home in the metaphysic realm.

It seems Shehu is a poet like that too. Like Goethe, he seeks for the warmth of life in the

contrivances of perennial ambience. Such perennial contrivances see soils in the world are real,

through the poet’s spiritual observance with his meditative experiences. This is my impression

when I read Sehu’s poems."

Abdul Hadi Wiji Muthari

Professor of Islamic Philosophy and Literature

University Paramadina, Jakarta, Indonesia



My luminous Forest


They built the Temple-

the Masters of the Soul's secrets-

for the Princess with the incomparable beauty


Thou Art is Objective

to be lived

to be experienced.

When the Time freezed and

became the Timelessness,

just sit with that gorgeous

building in the front

nothing else to do- just sit!

you shall see how serenity

brings the soothing of the heart and how it

leaves the strange taste

in your mouth


Do you happen to experience the Forest?


Did you ever heard

the hissing of the snakes,

the chirping voices of the birds

ate the wild strawberries

saw the cloud upon your

head formed by the Mistletoe

heard the cracking of the dried bows

covered with the decayed

leaves beneath your feet


collected the Spider's nets

in a tiny glass-jars

saw the rabbit nests

under the bushes and

how Ivy covered the trunks

of the tall trees.


Before you dwell in the sea

of your DMT and meet

your neon color white Queen

as luminous as a midday

sun-ray of July

Listen!

Listen what they have to say-

the Masters of the Heart

who became known centuries after

their disciples unveiled their names



All those bees


the work that produced

a sweet essence

all those sweat-drops fell

from the forehead

the time it all took to sweeten

the bitter days of Men

sleeples nights

long days all burning heat

fasting and adoration of Man

all wheat grains counted

all gold chunks and clogs

raindrops and swnoflakes

the lucids and perplexed

all assembled - called upon

to give sermons and orations

all burned libraries

the libraries all burned

into ashes turned

all forty seconds due death

erased- a grand reset

a preparation for another

augmentation




Counting the snowflakes


In over three decades

I meandered in the visible

semi-visible and invisible

running after the echoes

of you whispering my name

yet I could not-ever-see

the face that would lay

a sigh of relief and the glance

that imprints its seal on my skin


I went on counting the stars and

got nipples in both

of my hands as reward-

the reward as bitter as Absynth,

deliberately waiting

to taste better the sweetnes afterwards


I started to collect the dews from

the Lilly of the Valey and

heard the winds that shook

the barley leaves- leaving

a golden metallic sounds


I climbed the hill, run up

with the lungs full of air and

saw the different colors of

my blood how it turns and

transmutes into transparent


On the hill I connected

from Nadir to Horizon- the flashlight

I turned into

a plasmatic sphere of existance

rolling down the hill on the wet grass

I slide

the summer rain washed away

all my sins that were: lust,

passion, ego, and you name it


In over three decades- on every

winter I counted the snowflakes

and observed how they melted

on my eyelashes

I formed a ball of snow and

swallowed a mere lump of it

to reckon how it became

a fifth state of the matter and

my throat got hot- releasing

the strange sounds of my pre-birth


Here we are standing on the wings

of the suffer and lack of counsciousness

that Life is the most extraordinary and

the Love is Hesh* body

...while we still count the snowflakes


*Hesh-stands for genderless state of the Being i.e. He/She



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