University graduate student explores blindness and wisdom in new poetry collection

Bader Othman, a student in the Contemporary Arab Studies Master's Program at Birzeit University, recently released a collection of poems entitled “The Blind’s Book.”

The collection, Othman said, “is an engagement of the mythical concept of blindness, the blindness of the eyes and the perception of wisdom. An attempt at poetic storytelling.”

The story explores the relationship between a blind son and his blind father. The difference, masterfully nuanced and delicately unraveled, is between the son, who is blind and wise, and the father, who is blind and foolish.

“The Blind’s Book” is Othman’s first work. His second, “A Translation of Bach,” was recommended for publishing by the panel of judges at the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Writer Award.