Cirrus@Austlit

'With her first full-length poetry collection, Sara M Saleh introduces us to the polychromatic lives of girls and women as they come into being amidst war, colonial and patriarchal violence, and exile and migration. This searing work interrogates and represents the complexity of Arab-Australian Muslim women’s identities as they negotiate an irresistible world full of music and family, grit and grief, love and loss.

'Saleh’s poetry is not only an inherently political act, but a deeply personal one, charged with multilayered conversations and meditations amongst three generations of women in Sara’s family. Her poems dazzle with an incantatory force of spirit, survival and selfhood, proving without a doubt that Saleh is one of this country’s most compelling, contemporary poets.' (Publication summary)

'Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious.

'Songs for the Dead and the Living is a coming-of-age tale played out across generations and continents, from Palestine to Australia. Sara M Saleh offers a breathtaking portrait of the fragilities and flaws of family in the wake of war.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Thirty years ago, my folks migrated to a city half-dipped in ocean. To this day, they are sepia-faced and prayer-shaped, coal soot and cedar hills still rolling underneath their fingernails.' (Publication abstract)