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. 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.
