Poems of loss and liberation, the body and the human spirit: the astonishing debut collection from Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen

‘In this book, I am collecting the parts of myself I have found, in case there isn’t anyone there to do so if I am killed.’

Each of the forty-eight poems assembled in this startling bilingual collection represents a single kilogram of a body’s mass. In spare, stark language, Abu Akleen writes of a city under siege and a self under constant assault, articulating the personal and the public in the midst of unspeakable violence. 48kg immortalizes her voice and, in doing so, reaches out for a space of shared humanity.

‘One of the most viscerally affecting collections of poems I have ever read. Devastatingly precise and unforgettable images emerge from every line… What is happening in Gaza is a genocide not a war, but not since Akhmatova have I read poetry that so potently reckons with the relationship between war and the body. They create a new category of literary grace out of the cataclysm. These are poems of fire and agony, bombing and starvation, but they are also poems of grace, cleverness, tenderness and yearning. A great international poet arrives with this collection, but it is also a landmark work of resistance. No human should have to write their poetry from inside death’s dominion, but Batool Abu Akleen has done it, and the result is truly astonishing.’ ―Max Porter

Translated from Arabic by the poet (with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti and Yasmin Zaher), edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle and Cristina Viti, and published in collaboration with Tenement Press.