Here is the new Iraqi poetry.

Pierre Joris

A stunning new collection by one of Iraq’s brightest poetic voices

The Iraqi Nights

by Dunya Mikhail

Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

The Iraqi Nights is the third collection by the acclaimed Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail. Taking The One Thousand and One Nights as her central theme, Mikhail personifies the role of Scheherazade the storyteller, saving herself through her tales. In this haunting collection, the nights are endless, seemingly as dark and as endless as war. Yet the poet cannot stop dreaming of a future beyond the violence — of a place where “every moment / something ordinary / will happen under the sun.” Unlike Scheherazade, however, Mikhail is writing not to escape death, but to summon the strength to endure. Inhabiting the emotive spaces between Iraq and the U.S., Mikhail infuses those harsh realms with a deep poetic intimacy. The author’s vivid illustrations — inspired by Sumerian tablets — are threaded throughout this powerful book.

Paperback(published May, 27 2014)

ISBN
9780811222860
Price US
15.95
Price CN
17
Page Count
112

Ebook(published May, 27 2014)

ISBN
9780811222877
Portrait of Dunya Mikhail

Dunya Mikhail

20th Century Iraqi Poet

Here is the new Iraqi poetry.

Pierre Joris

The poems in this extraordinary collection sway back and forth between America (as a new home) and Baghdad (as a birthplace), between the artifacts of ancient Sumerian civilization and the walls of our modern times. There is no trace of nostalgia in Mikhail’s poetry, though her words feel poignantly real and rare, as if creating a museum of memories.

Hatem al-Sager, Al-Ittihad

Somewhere between a cutting-edge film and a 1002nd night of storytelling, interspersed with drawings and calligraphy, Dunya Mikhail’s new poems reframe, in a contemporary woman’s voice, the great poet al-Sayab’s cry from the heart: ‘Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq!’ Here, myth alleviates the exile’s longing, and exilic longin itself opens the poet’s eyes to broad horizons.

Marilyn Hacker

Mikhail’s style maintains an impressive fragility and delicacy of image that touches the reader’s heart…

American Poetry Review