RED VEIL YEAR BOOK, 2026
by ANWER GHANI
Pictorial Poetry
•
Published 2026
About the book
Poetry has a soul and a body. The pre-textual elements are the soul, and the textual and artistic elements are the body. The pre-textual elements represent the psychological, cultural, and intellectual foundation of the poet. What if the poet presents the soul of poetry without a body? Yes, this is abstraction and reduction in poetry, where ideas manifest spontaneously with minimal textual form. Reduction is a kind of abstraction—not an abstract text, but an abstracted soul.
Technically, a short poem is one that uses the fewest possible words to express a profound idea. It can range from a one-line poem to a three-line poem, or a medium-length, concise poem. To understand a short poem, one must know the poet and understand the elements of the parallel text. Yes, the words are few and the poem is short, but it creates a parallel text that penetrates deeply and builds other texts within the reader. It evokes multiple meanings and ideas. Behind this short text lies a longer text, indeed, many texts. This is the richness of the short poem.
The essence of poetry is not limited to ideas and images; it also includes emotional momentum. In every action, a person considers its consequences and makes decisions based on this relationship. In prose, the poet strives to convey the same idea with the fewest possible words, and in poetry, they attempt to express the same emotions with the fewest possible textual elements. The more intense and powerful the emotions, expressed in fewer words, the deeper the expression. The reader, with their keen intuition, will perceive the poet's skill and the depth of their feelings in the text relative to its brevity.
The short poem rests on two fundamental pillars: the parallel text and expressionism.
Here are short and medium-length poems by more than one hundred international poets whose works were published in the magazine "The Red Veil." These poems were selected from among their published short poems.
Contributors
The book is an anthology of poems by poets from around the world; all are authors and integral contributors. The poems were selected and compiled by Anwer Ghani, the editor of Red Veil magazine. Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi poet born in 1973, with over 400 published books and numerous awards to his name.
Anwer Ghani, IRAQ
