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The War Works HardDunya Mikhail10% off
Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, Arabic, BAME, War writings, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (96 pages) (Pub. Jul 2006) 9781857548693 £9.95 £8.96
'How magnificent the war is!
How eager and efficient! Early in the morning, it wakes up the sirens and dispatches ambulances to various places, swings corpses through the air, rolls stretchers to the wounded, summons rain from the eyes of mothers, digs into the earth dislodging many things from under the ruins... ...The war works with unparalleled diligence! Yet no one gives it a word of praise.' from 'The War Works Hard'
"Yesterday I lost a country," Dunya Mikhail writes in The War Works Hard, a subversive, sobering work by an exiled Iraqi poet, and her first collection to appear in English. Compassionate, engaged and direct, Mikhail's is a voice that transcends boundaries, and one that has rarely seemed more necessary.
Dunya Mikhail writes an Arabic poetry for the twenty-first century - urgent and painful, composed our of successive experiences of violence and exile. She remakes the traditional forms and imagery of Arabic poetry to give voice to women's experience of war, to the experiences of lovers, children and mothers, those whose vulnerability is also the tenacious humanity that gives hope of survival and new beginnings. An Iraqi, now living in the United States, Mikhail writes and speaks in Arabic, Arameic and English. Her literary inheritance embraces ancient myths, the sacred books of Christianity and Islam, and Western modernism, and she inhabits cultures that range from deep-rooted traditions to the brutalities of modern states. Mikhail has collaborated closely with the translator Elizabeth Winslow in publishing this collection.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Saadi Simawe ONE. THE WAR WORKS HARD (2004) Bag of Bones Shoemaker The War Works Hard The Game The Prisoner A Drop of Water Inanna An Urgent Call Non-Military Statements Between Two Wars Tough Rose The Jewel A Voice Travel Agency O Santa Claus Buzz Crashed Acts Snowstorm To Any Other Place I Was In A Hurry America Silent Movie Laheeb and the City The Rocking Chair Traces The Foreigner Five Minutes TWO. FROM ALMOST MUSIC (1997) The Cup The Resonance The Artist Child The Departure of Friends A Tombstone The Theory of Absence Nothing Here is Enough What's New? The Pomegranate Seeds With One Look From Him An Orange THREE. FROM THE PSALMS OF ABSENCE (1993) Behind the Glass The Nun The New Year Transformations of the Child and the Moon The Chaldean's Ruins The Shadow of a Tear Pronouns Notes
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)
'Here is the new Iraqi poetry: terse, unadorned, stripped and ironic...her voice is the inescapable voice of Arab poetry today.'
Pierre Joris 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 '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 |
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