Theory in Poetic Form: Responding to Ogunnaike’s 'The Book of Clouds'

This roundtable session discusses The Book of Clouds (Fons Vitae Press, 2024) by Oludamini Ogunnaike, one of the most recent works of the emerging trend of Islamic poetry in English. This work employs the classical ghazal and qasida forms and genres (praise, elegy, wine ode, ghazal) to do significant constructive theological and political work, taking on issues like the occupation of Palestine, white supremacy, the global refugee crisis, gun violence in US schools, women's repression in Iran, and more alongside Sufi explorations of the nature of the self, knowledge, language, love, and unity in a lyrical style dense with allusions to the Qur'an, the Islamic tradition, and classical Arabic, Persian, and English verse. Participants discuss the possibilities and potential drawbacks of doing intellectual and academic work in a poetic form as in this work.