Poetry Book Club - FEBRUARY

Hala Alyan - The Moon That Turns you Back

And we’re off!

Incase you missed it, this year I am hoping to read twelve poetry books over twelve months and in my last post I asked if anyone fancied joining me. Read about that here. Luckily some of you said yes, hurrah, hurray.

I’ll still be sharing other poetry on here, including my own and gathering up writing prompts to keep up with that side of my poetry addiction but I just always fancied a poetry based book club. So here we are….

Our first book club choice of the year - The Moon That Turns you Back, the fifth poetry collection by Palestinian-American poet and author

Hala Alyan

.

Here’s the blurb:

“A diaspora of memories runs through this poetry collection—a multiplicity of voices, bodies, and houses hold archival material for one another, tracing paths between Brooklyn, Beirut, and Jerusalem. Boundaries and borders blur between space and time and poetic form—small banal moments of daily life live within geopolitical brutalities and, vice versa, the desire for stability lives in familiarity with displacement.

These poems take stock of who and what can displace you from home and from your own body—and, conversely, the kind of resilience, tenacity, and love that can bring you back into yourself and into the context of past and future generations. Hala Alyan asks, What stops you from transforming into someone or something else? When you have lived a life in flux, how do you find rest?”

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From the very first page of this book I knew we were going to be exposed to new poetic forms and deep layers of questioning.

This is not the book review / discussion bit so I won’t get carried away. But I’ll just say that I’m already two thirds of my way through and am already looking forward to finding someone else to talk to about it.

I’m also really enjoying reading this ‘as a book.’ I mentioned this as one thing I’m looking forward to about poetry book club (I normally dip in and out of my poetry books) and suffice to say it’s working already. I’ll certainly be returning to dwell longer on certain poems once I reach the end but the experience of reading all the way through in one sitting (I don’t mean one day btw) is certainly having an impact.

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Dates to watch out for:

(If you’re subscribed then hopefully you’ll receive all of these automatically but for anyone who likes a plan ahead of time)

• SUNDAY FEBRUARY 23rd - the last Sunday of the month will be our discussion post to chat about the book we are reading that month. We have a little longer to read this month while we get into our routine.

• THURSDAY FEBRUARY 27th - 12.30pm (London), Poetry Circle

  Paid Subscribers - come and chat, read and write some poetry inspired by the book. It’s not necessary to have read the book, I’ll send out more info and joining instructions prior as usual.

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And whether you’re planning to join in this month or not, here’s a poem I thought I’d send you. This is also by

Hala Alyan

, and is called Object Permanence, via Poets.org. Line after line after line of pure poetry.

What do you think? Isn’t it stunning?!

Nelly x