Tablets
Secrets of the Clay
Published on 26. September 2024
144 pages
978-1-80017-440-5 (ISBN)
Description
'A bullet / then a siren / then ruins / then a bird song telling the truth' - Dunya Mikhail
In her marvellous new poetry collection Tablets: Secrets of the Clay, Dunya Mikhail transforms the world's first symbols - Sumerian glyphs that were carved into clay tablets - into the matter of our everyday contemporary life. Each of the ten sections in her book is composed of twenty-four short poems, and each poem combines both text and drawing. In her note to the collection, Mikhail writes, 'I practiced at least two layers of translation in these tablets: the first from words in one language, Arabic, to another, English; and the second from words to images. What I received from my ancestors are offerings of the future rather than of the past. Now it's my turn to offer them to you.'
In her marvellous new poetry collection Tablets: Secrets of the Clay, Dunya Mikhail transforms the world's first symbols - Sumerian glyphs that were carved into clay tablets - into the matter of our everyday contemporary life. Each of the ten sections in her book is composed of twenty-four short poems, and each poem combines both text and drawing. In her note to the collection, Mikhail writes, 'I practiced at least two layers of translation in these tablets: the first from words in one language, Arabic, to another, English; and the second from words to images. What I received from my ancestors are offerings of the future rather than of the past. Now it's my turn to offer them to you.'
Reviews / Votes
'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 has long been building a dictionary of symbols-the shell, the flower, the stars-that recur across her books. In Tablets she takes the logical next step and creates her own cuneiform.'
Anna Della Subin, New York Review of Books
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
File size
16,69 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-440-5 (9781800174405)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Person
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 her as 'one of ten modern Arab writers who should make Arabs proud'. According to the Christian Science Monitor, 'Dunya Mikhail is one of the foremost poets of our time'. She currently works as a special lecturer of Arabic and poetry at Oakland University in Michigan.
