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In Her Feminine Sign

Dunya Mikhail

Cover of In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail
10% off eBook (EPUB)
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Categories: 21st Century, American, Arabic, BAME, War writings, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (80 pages)
(Pub. Aug 2019)
9781784108533
£10.99 £9.89
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Aug 2019)
9781784108540
£8.79 £7.91
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • A Poetry Book Society Autumn 2019 Wild Card Selection

    At the heart of In Her Feminine Sign, Dunya Mikhail’s luminous new collection of poems, is the Arabic suffix taamarbuta, ‘the tied circle’ – a circle with two dots above it that indicates a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. With a deceptive simplicity and disquieting humour reminiscent of Wisława Szymborska, and a lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail slips between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, tracing new circles of light.
    Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi American poet and writer. She is a laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and has received fellowships from the United States Artists, the Guggenheim, and Kresge. The United Nations granted her Human Rights Watch Award for freedom of writing and Arab America listed ... read more
    Awards won by Dunya Mikhail Winner, 2019 A Poetry Book Society Autumn Wild Card Selection
    (In Her Feminine Sign)
    Short-listed, 2005  Griffin International Poetry Prize
    (The War Works Hard)
    Winner, 2004 Pen Translation Fund Award
    (The War Works Hard)
    'Mikhail explores processes and their accoutrements, their spin-offs and accessories... There are several small jewel like pieces that are truly luminous'
    Ian Pople, The Manchester Review
    'a collection of limpid meditations which demand that we pause as we read [...] profoundly thought-through work'

    Fiona Sampson, Guardian Poetry Review Roundup

    'In Her Feminine Sign is a wise and innovative set of poems which ask us to consider not only what it means to be living away from home, but how home can shift depending on a number of variables.'

    Anthony Anaxagorou, PBS Autumn Bulletin 

    Praise for Dunya Mikhail 'many [of the poems] perform intricate and impactful shifts of context and perspective, while others feel unbearably freighted with the poet's experience and philosophy around war and exile. Tablets demands active imaginative work from the reader, and richly rewards close emotional engagement.'

    Dave Coates, PBS Autumn Bulletin


    'Here is the new Iraqi poetry: terse, unadorned, stripped and ironic...her voice is the inescapable voice of Arab poetry today.'
    Pierre Joris
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