Visiting Hours by Saif Sidari

In Visiting Hours, Saif Sidari offers a profound exploration of identity, memory, and belonging, tracing the intricate intersections of queerness, masculinity, and displacement. Through vivid and unflinching poetry, Sidari examines the enduring legacies of love and trauma, exposing the tensions between familial bonds and personal truths. With a voice that moves fluidly between the deeply personal and the universally resonant, this debut pamphlet is a testament to the courage it takes to return—to the body, to life, and to the complexities of selfhood. PRAISE for Visiting Hours: There is an impassioned strength to the vulnerability, a gentle fire glowing within this work. Saif beautifully combines the sweet minutiae of the mundane—life away from home, self-image, sweet treats baked by a mother—with the bitter rage of injustice, oppression, longing and loneliness. Nostalgic narrative is given a realistic sharpness. With a considered, insightful voice, this collection rings out bright and clear. — Georgina Langford Visiting Hours is a beautiful mediation on memory, desire, family and the body. Layered with fragility and tension, this is a collection threaded with simmering verse, reflecting on finding oneself and the pains of lost opportunity. Sidari is an exciting new voice. — Michael Handrick One thing I love about this fine debut pamphlet is how so many phrases in specific poems resonate with the universal theme of exile—exile from place, family, queer love, even from our own bodies: "I remember growing up in the tensions—ridiculous / wickedness.' Throughout this moving pamphlet I get the sense that the desired recipients will never read it, but that hope and release is still achieved from "the pitiless bounties of a letter that can never arrive' as "inside my playdough body sits an unblinking witness'—and bearing its witness is what Visiting Hours thoroughly deserves. — Simon Maddrell