Akram Najjar 
Sunday Afternoon and Other Poems 

In 1984, Akram wrote his first poem, having been drawn to poetry since his teens. He wrote several more and realized soon that many were focusing on internal emotional issues, particular to Akram. That gave him a jolt. He retracted by destroying most of the poems he had written. He also stopped reading poets whose only concern was internal rumblings. He concentrated on poets with universal, humanistic or philosophic concerns. Luckily, there are many of these poets. Since then, his poems, even though some are in the first person singular, always attempt to move out of the personal and the autobiographical.