Poetry

What happens when poetry refuses to obey the rules of language, logic, and reality? This collection brings together two visionary poets who helped reshape modern literature: Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov and French avant-garde writer Guillaume Apollinaire. Moving between animals, art, love, revolution, war, and the mysteries of time, their poems reveal radically different ways of seeing the world. Khlebnikov experiments with language and explores the hidden patterns of history, while Apollinaire blends lyrical beauty with daring modernist invention. Translated by Robert Chandler, this collection invites readers into a world where words become experiments, familiar things turn strange, and poetry imagines entirely new possibilities for human experience.

If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose is a collection of poems, essays, and short writings by Palestinian writer and academic Refaat Alareer, bringing together his reflections on life in Gaza, the experience of occupation, and the enduring importance of storytelling. Through intimate personal accounts and powerful literary expression, Alareer explores grief, displacement, resistance, and the determination to preserve Palestinian identity amid violence and destruction. The collection includes his internationally known poem “If I Must Die,” which imagines a kite as a symbol of hope and a message to the world. Combining political urgency with tenderness and humanity, the book bears witness to the experiences of Palestinians while celebrating their cultural heritage, collective memory, and desire for freedom. It stands as both a literary testament and a call to remember the human lives behind the headlines.

What does it mean to inherit a war you can never fully leave behind? In this powerful debut poetry collection, Bosnian poet Selma Asotić explores the lingering wounds of the Bosnian War, tracing how violence becomes embedded in family histories, bodies, and memories. Through vivid, fragmented poems, she moves between childhood recollections, the grief of losing loved ones, the troubled legacy of a soldier uncle, and the search for intimacy in a world shaped by conflict. Her writing also embraces lesbian desire, female solidarity, and the complicated relationship between a daughter and her mother. Fire becomes both a destructive force and a symbol of resistance—a language for experiences that ordinary words cannot contain. Moving between tenderness and anger, silence and confession, Asotić asks whether poetry can recover what history has shattered. Say Fire is a deeply personal exploration of survival, belonging, and the struggle to reclaim one’s voice from the ruins of the past.

Set in the late 1980s, We Computers follows Jon-Perse, a French poet and psychologist who becomes fascinated by the possibilities of computer technology. With the help of his Uzbek translator, Abdulhamid Ismail, he develops a program designed to analyze and generate poetry. Yet the machine’s literary experiments open doors to worlds far beyond its code, weaving together philosophy, history, mysticism, and human longing. Drawing on the Persian poet Hafez, Sufi literature, French surrealism, and Central Asian storytelling, Hamid Ismailov creates an unconventional novel that moves through ideas and narratives like a literary labyrinth. Inspired by the ghazal—a poetic form traditionally associated with love and longing—the book explores the boundaries between human creativity and artificial intelligence, questioning who can claim authorship and whether literature can transcend the limits of its creator. It is a playful, intellectually adventurous meditation on poetry’s ability to connect cultures and centuries.

First published in 1981, Sleep Journeys is a groundbreaking long-form prose poem that explores the hidden landscapes of a woman’s inner life. Moving through the shifting territory between sleep and wakefulness, dreams and reality, Azra Abbas examines faith, female desire, sexuality, and the subconscious with startling intimacy. Divided into three cantos, the work unfolds through recurring images, fragmented thoughts, and poetic repetitions rather than a conventional narrative. Its seemingly simple language conceals a complex emotional world in which private fantasies and suppressed desires emerge alongside questions of identity, spirituality, and the constraints placed on women. When Abbas first published the poem, her experimental approach challenged established expectations of Urdu poetry, particularly its traditional forms and conventions. The result is both intimate and radical: a work that gives voice to thoughts and desires rarely expressed openly, transforming the private experience of a woman into a profound meditation on consciousness and freedom. More than four decades after its original publication, Sleep Journeys remains a landmark of modern Urdu feminist literature.