The Forgotten Letters of Oxford

During his years at Oxford, Samir Foz often felt like an outsider — a desert-born dreamer surrounded by scholars of the English literary elite. His professors admired his raw poetic voice but struggled to categorize his style.

One night, while studying alone in the university library, he discovered a box of forgotten letters written by 19th-century poet Eleanor Graves, hidden behind old volumes. Inspired, he wrote his first English collection, Echoes of Eleanor, blending her unfinished verses with his imagination.

When published, the collection stirred both curiosity and admiration, earning Samir the Phoenix Storyteller Medal. Literary critics praised his ability to merge history and imagination, calling him “a poet who resurrects the past with compassion.”

Years later, he admitted that the letters might never have existed — that perhaps he invented Eleanor as a metaphor for the lost voices in every writer’s soul. Whether true or not, Echoes of Eleanor remains one of his most hauntingly beautiful works.