"It contains 48 poems, each representing a kilogram of bodyweight, with the book literally thinning as the pages turn. The final poem declares: I die without a voice. / He skins me, flesh from bones. / Cuts me into forty-eight pieces. Distributes the parts in blue plastic bags / & throws them to the four corners. Unlike the Muses who buried Orpheus's dismembered limbs, the poem ends with the paramedic guessing which of these bags / contain my flesh."
"Written in Gaza between 2023 and 2025, Abu Akleen's poems disassemble and painstakingly reassemble the body to interrogate injustice, death and grief. She creates a world where absurdity and reality, irony and humanity coexist from the ice-cream man crying out corpses for sale while noting that no grave buys them, to death wanting to have a birthday party and picking an arm the missile hadn't shattered."
"Abu Akleen self-translated 38 of the 48 poems, describing the process of translation as making peace with death, while writing in Arabic meant being torn apart without anyone there to recollect it. The book articulates the vital linguistic bridge she establishes in the present between Arabic and English, and includes historical photographs of Gaza from 1863 and 1908 and the 2022 discovery of a fifth-century Byzantine mosaic, highlighting the city's rich cultural history."
Forty-eight numbered pieces correspond to kilograms of bodyweight, and the physical object visibly thins as pages turn. The sequence disassembles and painstakingly reassembles the body to interrogate injustice, death and grief. Vivid, surreal images coexist with brutal realism, from an ice-cream seller calling corpses to Death choosing an arm spared by a missile. Thirty-eight of the pieces were self-translated, a process described as making peace with death, while composition in Arabic is described as being torn apart without anyone to recollect it. Historical photographs and a Byzantine mosaic reference situate the work within Gaza's long cultural history.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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