As the inaugural edition of the Kurdish Poetry Series, Selim Temo's Nightlands is translated by Zêdan Xelef & Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse from the Kurmanji, edited by Öykü Tekten, with an introduction by Zêdan Xelef.
 
Published in bilingual editions, the Kurdish Poetry Series is the first of its kind, featuring only contemporary Kurdish poets whose work has either never before appeared in English or only been translated in a handful of anthologies and journals.
 
— 
 
the scarecrow in the sesame
 
the wind is my soul
my spine a Latin cross
i've sent the birds into sulk
my frayed hat never waves back
 
i am alone in the sesame
fallow and sown; dead neighbors
no one comes for company
but humming time and my emptiness
 
night belongs to itself
day to anyone
 
there is no hiding from fire
 
— 
 
PRAISE FOR NIGHTLANDS
 
"What a tragedy it is for world literature that little treasures such as these are so hard to find, so few and far between. Reading the poems in Nightlands in English, side by side with their Kurmanji original versions, I found myself both delighted and determined to uncover more literary voices that are further afield from our usual bailiwick."
                                                      —Jordan Elgrably, The Markaz Review