Ali Eslami: Line of Sight

“Line of Sight” is a collection of experimental poetry by Ali Eslami, exploring the interplay of emotions and memories. The work is written as codes representing the writer’s thoughts during his mandatory military service in Iran. These code-poems are designed as pieces of code that can be read, interpreted, and compiled by the reader, inviting them to decode and piece together a disrupted and fragmented self.
Departing from Eslami’s background in virtual reality and film, the collection emerged from a deep-seated need to express the inexpressible. Through a mixture of poems, codes, ASCII pictograms, and absurdist stories, the author captures the struggle of existing between two worlds —the diasporic reality of life between present-day Amsterdam and the evocative echoes of Iran’s past and present, narrated through the dual voices of introspection and projection.