Handful of Salt

Poetry. Middle Eastern Studies. Women's Studies. Translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse. If you could cross Adrienne Rich with Gloria Steinem, then steep that poet in the political turmoil of Kurdistan, give her an extra jolt of lyric electricity and courage, you would create Kajal Ahmad, author of these breathtaking poems, translated for the first time into English by a team of young Kurdish women and their leader, poet-translator Levinson-LaBrosse. Says Eve Ensler: "These poems by Kajal Ahmad are intoxications, sensual rumblings from the core of a woman's fire, burning through homeland and body, casting off time and space, unveiling, opening a new landscape, a new territory beyond logic or right and wrong. These poems are revolutions of language, a bursting of feminine power. A stunning and revelatory collection." Christopher Merrill calls this book "a superb introduction to the work of an acclaimed Kurdish poet, whose chronicles of her walk in the sun mirror the complicated and tragic history of her people, in diverse forms and voices. What a light these poems cast on everyone and everything."