{"id":11230,"date":"2020-03-19T21:15:03","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T20:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11230"},"modified":"2020-03-20T11:18:46","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T10:18:46","slug":"dunya-mikhail-in-her-feminine-sign-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11230","title":{"rendered":"Dunya Mikhail | <strong><em>In Her Feminine Sign<\/strong><\/em> | reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Dunya Mikhail | <em>In Her Feminine Sign<\/em> | Carcanet: \u00a310.99 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-right: 10px;\" src=\"https:\/\/i.postimg.cc\/L5vdSx19\/81t-EJTh-TRLL.jpg\" width=\"220\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The word \u2018luminous\u2019 is used on the back cover blurb to Dunya Mikhail\u2019s new collection, <em>In Her Feminine Sign<\/em>. And \u2018luminous\u2019 seems apposite;  there is a clarity and directness to the poems here which does seem luminous.  There is also the sense that the poems illuminate.  And the illumination is of the processes of a life lived between cultures.  Mikhail was brought up in Iraq, but now lives in the US; is of Christian heritage, but grew up speaking Arabic and living amongst Muslims.  In the introduction to this book, Mikhail comments that the poems emerged in, literally, two directions;  written across the page from right to left in Arabic and then from left to right in English.  And perhaps that sense of two writing processes at work animates the dynamic of these poems.  <\/p>\n<p>The poems range between longer descriptions of people in\/and places, to shorter pieces that Mikhail suggests are an \u2018attempt to write Iraqi haiku\u2019.  But what connects the poems is the way Mikhail explores processes and their accoutrements, their spin-offs and accessories.  In \u2018My Grandmother\u2019s Grave\u2019, Mikhail delineates aspects of her grandmother\u2019s life, \u2018her bed on our roof, \/ the battle of good and evil in her tales, \/ her black clothes, \/her mourning for her daughter \/ <em>killed by headaches<\/em>, \/ the rosary beads and her murmur, \/ <em>Forgive us our sins<\/em>.\u2019  Mikhail then moves on to the Sumerians, the first known civilization from the lower Mesopotamia area, \u2018their dreams inscribed in clay tablets\u2019.  The juxtaposition of Mikhail\u2019s grand mother and the Sumerians runs the processes of a life and the processes of a civilization against each other.  The comparisons are, obviously, not simple ones but Mikhail shows the individual and the collective developing, even where that development is not, and cannot be, smooth.  Later, in this tale, \u2018the clouds descended on us \/ war by war.\u2019  And with the wars, the barbarians who \u2018broke my grandmother\u2019s grave \u2013 my clay tablet. \/ They smashed the winged bulls whose eyes \/ were wide open \/ sunflowers.\u2019 Mikhail\u2019s purpose here is not simply to show how the personal is the political;  her purpose is, perhaps, to suggest how the locations of the personal and cultural become one another.  Even where there may be thousands of years\u2019 difference in time, this mutuality is true not only of Iraq but of everywhere.  As Mikhail puts it at the end of the poem, \u2018My hand brushes the map \/ as if rubbing an old scar.\u2019  <\/p>\n<p>The four sections of part two of the book, \u2018Tablets\u2019 offer Mikhail\u2019s Iraqi haiku.  Here, too, Mikhail is much concerned with process, albeit on an often tiny scale, as in \u2018I don\u2019t care under which sky \u2013 l just sing your song till the end.\u2019  And it would be very easy to point out that such poems can always verge on the twee;  the criticism of Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur shows how poetry can be seen to be stripped of its essentials in the effort to be instantly appealing.  The fact that Mikhail\u2019s \u2018Iraqi haiku\u2019 are usually successful, is due to her ability to pull the personal and the cultural together so that the process emerges from their proximity.  And, yes, the poems are also a profound reflection on the clouds descending on Iraq, \u2018war by war\u2019.  But Mikhail\u2019s poems explore the moments of transcendence in all that.  For every one of these short poems, which has a slightly propagandist lilt to it, such as, \u2018Ask not how many houses were built. \/ Ask how many residents remained the houses\u2019, with its conscious echo of John Kennedy;  there are several small jewel like pieces that are truly luminous:  \u2018The sun reveals \/ a hole in the boat, \/ a glow in the fins \/ of fish still breathing.\u2019 Or, \u2018The lanterns know the value of night, \/ and they are more patient \/ than the stars. \/ They stay until morning.\u2019 <\/p>\n<p><strong>by Ian Pople<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dunya Mikhail | In Her Feminine Sign | Carcanet: \u00a310.99 The word \u2018luminous\u2019 is used on the back cover blurb to Dunya Mikhail\u2019s new collection, In Her Feminine Sign. And \u2018luminous\u2019 seems apposite; there is a clarity and directness to the poems here which does seem luminous. There is also the sense that the poems [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dunya Mikhail | In Her Feminine Sign | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11230\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dunya Mikhail | In Her Feminine Sign | reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dunya Mikhail | In Her Feminine Sign | Carcanet: \u00a310.99 The word \u2018luminous\u2019 is used on the back cover blurb to Dunya Mikhail\u2019s new collection, In Her Feminine Sign. And \u2018luminous\u2019 seems apposite; there is a clarity and directness to the poems here which does seem luminous. 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