2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. These 21 prose poems were written in a three-way conversation with Dante, who brought his experience of Purgatory to bear as he led us through this era in which we, too, find ourselves trudging an upward spiral with only hope to sustain us. As in his celebrated journey, we encountered trials and obstacles to overcome and lessons to learn, and his guidance was invaluable. We hoped that he would show us Paradise but, like his Roman predecessor, he could only take us so far, leaving us with Virgil's valediction: You have seen the temporary fire and the eternal fire; you have reached the place past which my powers cannot see. The next step is ours to choose.
"The pandemic is our purgatory in these prose poems, strewn with the detritus of death and life, torment and beauty. Is there a way forward? As we learn from Dante at the very heart of his poem, the next step is ours to choose."
- Laurie Shepard, Associate Professor of Italian, Boston College
"Amina Alyal and Oz Hardwick bring Dante's themes and images brilliantly to bear on our Covid era, in prose poems whose imaginative flights are superbly controlled - and philosophically purposed. Essential reading in this Dante 700th anniversary year."
- Paul Munden, poet and Editor of Divining Dante
"A thick soup of allegories that become possible oxymorons in that non-linear sea that is our experience in this life. Amina Alyal and Oz Hardwick have managed to rework Dante's poetic material, with its immense specific weight, and to translate it into a very personal style: rich, vivid and figurative. Despite the thread of a bobbin run by the devil, despite the thin finger that urges us into the labyrinth, and despite the roads blocked by fallen stars and fallen angels, there is a very strong need to dress our bodies with a True - albeit not real - skin that shows us the way."
- Santy Masciarò, Dante Society London
