Prelude

Oumar Farouk Sesay writes from the margins while living in the middle of their daily invisibility. These hidden margins seem to provide the walking path this poet use to take note of the places we pass unnoticed in the rush of our day, to remember the face of pain and joy even across continents, to hear the songbird when it sounds, the minor note of dissonance and sadness, cousin of the forlorn flute.

The Edge of a Cry enters alongside marginal spaces, listens for silence, and watches for the faceless. As wandering poet Farouk lets words arrive on paper from the inside out, unveiling his own hidden inner landscape, the liminal opening that feels the sound of the Cry.

I have followed Farouk’s poetry across volumes and encounters. When he recites, his poems jump alive as if they needed reverberating sound to accompany the muteness of the page…