In Her Feminine Sign

A Poetry Book Society Autumn 2019 Wild Card SelectionAt the heart of In Her Feminine Sign, Dunya Mikhail's luminous new collection of poems, is the Arabic suffix taamarbuta, 'the tied circle' a circle with two dots above it that indicates a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. With a deceptive simplicity and disquieting humour reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska, and a lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail slips between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, tracing new circles of light.