Dear Marionette, pull the strings of your memory!  Tell us about yourself and how many Tomes your quill has masterfully inked.

"I am a Tunisian poet by passion and an English teacher by profession. That's how I would always like to introduce myself; nevertheless, I believe that I am much more of a poet than a mere English teacher. Some would call me 'RR", and I really find that an exquisitely neck-craning as well as motivating thing to hear, probably because it would sound like "Baudelaire", the bard of Paris. Actually I don't have the habit of tooting my own horn talking much about myself, my achievements and publications; however, I sometimes feel like being a little bit braggy about my four poetry books, namely "Dance of the Metaphors", "The Crash of Verses", "Rough Roads", and "Vapour of the mind". These four collections could be construed as four wall mirrors in front of which a reader would love to pensively preen and ponder. There are almost all kinds of poems one could imagine, poems about love and beauty, poems about Mankind in the throes of debilitating pain and suffering, poems that skirt the unknown along with the invisible, and poems deep enough to approach in myriad ways. Added to that, I am on tenterhooks waiting for my fifth collection of poetry entitled In the Wind I Stand. In this respect I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and boundless gratitude to I Ain’t Your Marionette Press for everything they have been doing to make this opus become a reality.

In truth, my philosophy of life and my philosophy of poetry throughout my books are almost one. The only difference could be that unlike the former, which is a journey, the latter is a destination hard to govern by time, a latibule fueling the soul. 

Pluck your strings like a harpist in trance and reveal unto us the title of your latest opus—the very quill-scribed creation that skirts the precipice of imagination and madness!  And whence came the  electrician that wired your literary bulb? What whispers of chaos birthed such prose?

"My latest work of art is entitled "Vapour of the Mind." It is another possibility to measure pain by poetry and a chance to reflect upon the world with a fully awakened mind to the chaos around and within us as human beings. This book was published last year by Wheelsong Poetry Books and it was inspired by a terrible fever I had one Winter night as I was endlessly writhing in my bed and coughing my heart out. In fact, this wasn't a nightmare but it was just a river of sweat and delirium I could only overcome with the help of the first peep of dawn. As I opened the window to let the cool breeze in, my towering temperature took a plunge. At that moment, I felt like I was opening not a window, but rather a voluminous book. Therefore the idea of calling the latest creation "Vapour of the  Mind" hit me between the eyes and cropped up in my mind. Fever was then a blessing in disguise, a catalyst that got me to think such unique title which is so near and dear to me. "

Do your wooden sinews harbor peculiar rituals, as your quill--inked in inspiration--dances upon the parchment of your future masterpiece?

"Well, I have some sort of predilection, I mean  tendency, to do "rituals" for my poetry, but most interestingly I draw a great deal upon Nature and historic water reservoirs i.e. the Aghlabid basins in Tunisia, especially in Kairouan, where you can find me sitting and meditating for hours. Nature is in fact a gold mine full of endless opportunities not only to create genuine poetry but also to skirt a queerer but much more promising precipice of imagination. Sitting in the woods, for instance, to fuel your ears with a variety of such sounds as the rustling of foliage, hissing of. Cockroaches, and buzzing of bees could awaken in you an avalanche of thoughts that would crystallize and materialize into verse. Watching sea waves rising and breaking before your very eyes is a demonstration that everything around you is in continual search for limitlessness, albeit waves find no more space as they reach the shore except to splash and return to the sea. But what remains is at least the soothing sand where you can trust your squelching feet and allow your toe to scribble one word or two as a message for someone you love or for the waves' comeback. 

Imagination, I think, is more important than knowledge itself. Imagination is capable of dwarfing knowledge even mainly when it comes to grappling with poetry as a ritual in and of itself. A poet could be an imagineer, a man of rituals, and a wizard who closes his eyes upon dust in an attempt to explore old forts for example. One thing I could be certain about is the fact that the real asset after all is the power of words in translating emotions into thoughts and thoughts into poems. History, Nature, and time function as treasure troves of organic metaphors and buried images. 

In one of my poems entitled "A Song for the Dead," I compare the "white stones" I had "to grind between my furious fingers" to "picked eons" with smelt their scent." The underlying idea is that this act of grinding a reality between your fingers could be a poetic expression for "the velvety void hanging above (...) the dead." On the whole rituals are crucial in unkinking the knots between things that we deem to be separate and remote. However, the mere image of a water mirror in the bottom of a well could echo back more than we put into it. Water would reverberate rippling images of our faces and what's more than that it may add its own murmurs and sounds. So, could it be possible that we communicate much better with ourselves and the outside world when we experience this kind of natural rituals?"  

 String freshly snipped, hinges screeching and wood creaking I ponder:  What ink-stained tales' puppeteer the strings of your imagination?  Whose words influence your quill?  Speak, fellow marionette of mind-molding tales--what authors inspire you?

“I still feel the grabhoe of my mother digging into my heart as she would grow with it garlic every October inside those rough furrows opened to the sun by the plough. I think I was born a poet as I inherited the genes of poetry from my mother's sad songs in the fields of garlic and wheat. Her sagacious words impressed me the most especially when she hummed deeply moving sounds that carried within them words I wasn't able to catch. She was a woman of wisdom, albeit a little bit acerbic in her criticism when I forget to listen her advice. Well, "spare the rod and spoil the child," as they say.  As I grew older and entered school I cut my teeth on Charles Baudelaire and I was absolutely hooked on his collection Flowers of Evil. I also read Aboul-Qacem Echebbi's poetry  in depth later on and drew mainly on his collection, "Songs of Life." Subsequently, I was influenced by other interesting figures like Dylan Thomas, Pessoa, Seamus Heaney, and Herbert Zbiginiew, the author of "Mr. Cogito," who acts as the poet's alter ego that rejects the shadow of communism. What's more, Emile Zola's book called Germinal which I read at the age of 15 or 16 was for me like a tunnel into the unknown. Admittedly, great authors and poets like these may open wide your eyes on the world of poetry, but I don't believe they have a role in crystallizing your poetic voice. This, I think, pertains to your imagination and inspiration only. " 

 What are you currently spinning with your golden thread?

"At the moment I am working on a new project with Brandon Adam Haven, an American poet and a friend of mine. All I need is time and tranquility in a quiet and peaceful place just to grab inspiration and let the quill draw more existential dances on parchment. I am quite sure that Brandon and I will put much of us into this project which will hopefully be a success in every outward and inward sense of the word. Well, we haven't thought yet about a title for our opus but I think we will embark on the suitable title by the end the process. But let me tell you that at the current time I am in cloud nine, looking forward to the release of my new collection, "In the Wind I Stand" which will be an incentive for more creation and spinning of genuine poetic fiber." 

Do you have any advice for future Marionette's wishing to put quill to parchment?

“Firstly, I would borrow Charles Baudelaire's famous quote " always be a poet, even in prose." I believe that this is a good advice for future Marionette's wishing to put pen to paper.

Secondly, give time to time and keep scraping your quill through bleeding flowers inside you for you never know when they will regain full greenery and turn into spring.

Added to that, listen to everything with your eyes and don't let your ears trust the lies of the outside world but rather to take with a little grain of salt.

Remember that life hides things from us and sometimes chooses to even hide us forever. So, your role is to record for the future generations your pain and joy by the road of the quill and by poetry's mirror.

Finally, think outside the box and you will discover other prisms to look into the world from. ” 

Embrace your tangled threads and spill the milk on the best advice you have ever heard.

“Well, it's no use crying over spilt milk, but I can tell you that I am really groggy with remorse for not believing in the power of words from the very beginning or I would have published many more books. The problem is that when you are surrounded by the wrong people who always keep insisting that poetry is the sister of insanity and that poets are wasting their time, you may feel like you are casting pearls before swine."

Now,  dear masterless marionette, what does the future hold for your quill?

“The present is so blinding and the future is hidden. We wait and we will see what the latter has in store. ”