Djelloul Marbrook

Djelloul Marbrook Djelloul Marbrook began writing poems in Manhattan at age fourteen. He abandoned writing poetry after publishing poems in small journals in his thirties, but he continued reading and studying poetry. At age sixty-seven, shaken by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he stuck a notebook in his pocket and began walking around Manhattan, a kind of armed response. He soon realized his lifelong love of poetry was being realized in his notes. Those notes became Far From Algiers, which won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize in  2007 and was published a year later by Kent State University Press.

His voice in Far From Algiers speaks to anyone who has ever had doubts about belonging. Born in French Algiers in 1934 to an American artist and a Bedouin father and arriving in America as a gravely ill infant, he has contemplated this issue throughout his life.

The Wick judge, Toi Derricotte, wrote, “This superb first book...honors a lifetime of hidden achievement...Sometimes the poems seem utterly symbolic, surreal; they are philosophical, historical, psychological, political, and spiritual. The genius is in the many ways these poems can be read. I kept being rewarded by new awarenesses of the poet's intentions, by the breadth and scope of the manuscript.” 

His second book of poems, Brushstrokes and Glances, published in 2010 by Deerbrook Editions, is about artists, art and museums. Marbrook's aunt was the pioneer abstract geometric painter I. Rice Pereira, and the work of his mother, who signed herself Juanita Guccione, has achieved considerable contemporary recognition.

Writing in The Line Break, editor Tom Holmes said:

"Brushstrokes and Glances is like an art museum, especially in the first half of the book, A Jar of Marsala. Each poem in the first half is about a specific piece of art or artist and his mother, who was also an artist. I would like to see each of these poems in the museum hanging next to the artwork it is referencing. The poems, while ekphrastic poems, aren't explications of the artwork, fortunately, but rather the poem is the artwork's dance partner." Affirming this enthusiasm, Holmes linked many of the poems to their images and museums."

In fact, Brushstrokes and Glances is like an art museum about a specific artist or painting. Each poem in the first half is about a specific Marbrook's poetry has been published in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Oberon, Reed, The Ledge, Perpetuum Mobile, Orbis, Chronogram, Atticus, Le Zaporogue, Attic Damazine, The Same, and other journals. 

His short story, “Artists' Hill,” won the Literal Latté fiction prize in 2008. It was adapted from an unpublished trilogy, Light Piercing Water. His novella, Alice Miller's Room, was published in 1999 as an e-book by Online Originals, UK. Another novella, Artemisia's Wolf, will be published in 2011 by Prakash Books, India. His novella Saraceno, was published recently as an e-book by Bliss Plot Press.

Djelloul Marbrook is a retired newspaper reporter and editor. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York with his wife, Marilyn, and maintains cultural and literary blogs where he frequently writes appreciations of fellow writers.

ED: Updated February 2011.


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First posted on January 4, 2010 6:00 AM