Published Bahraini author Laala Kashef Alghata is set to release her third book this month.
A collection of poetry, titled Cupid’s Rage, will be available for purchase from bookstores in Bahrain on October 15.
“Cupid’s Rage puts together my work from 2008 to 2011,” said the 25-year-old author.
“It’s a follow up to my first poetry collection, Behind the Mask: A Folded Heart, which was published in 2006.”
Ms Kashef Alghata wrote the poems in Cupid’s Rage during her university years.
“They hold a lot of memories and several are inspired by Scotland as I spent a lot of time there,” she explained.
“The poems vary from love poetry to poetry about family and relationships in general.”
She said the book was named after one of her favourite poems in the collection.
“Cupid is seen as this benevolent figure in modern media, as this cute cherub that shoots arrows, but in mythology it’s not quite like that,” she said.
“For me, Cupid has always been more of a warrior.
“I don’t see him as particularly benevolent.
“I chose the title for the book because I think it carries the message that love isn’t something that is necessarily simple or sugary sweet.”
Ms Kashef Alghata started putting the book together in May when she went through her archives of more than 300 poems and the final manuscript was completed in August.
“I filtered through a lot of poems to and filtered it down to those that were emotive and still held a deep importance to me,” she said.
“I wanted poems that I could still look at as something I want to read, while selecting things that flowed together well.”
Cupid’s Rage is split into two sections and the poems are arranged according to their chronology, with the first half reflecting Ms Kashef Alghata’s earlier writing.
For the cover of her book, the local author worked with a graphic designer in the
Philippines.
“I discussed how I wanted the cover to be a juxtaposition of the rage in the title and the calmness of some of the other themes in the book,” said Ms Kashef Alghata.
For more information, email info@laala.co or visit www.laala.co.
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