#mira mattar

[kitchen-light]

I’ll do to language what they did to my people I’ll blow it apart & make it run I’ll sear its rough & tender forms to burning I’ll take each singing hollow    inside the As & Os that stretch the words  out daily in elastic pleasure                                                                                bread                                                               heat  & make it hungry

Mira Mattar, from her poem '10 November 2023', published in Mizna, February 20, 2024. You can read the entire poem here.

#mira mattar #poetry #words #palestine #found* #language

[her-moth]

read the rest of the poem here

#mira mattar #mizna #gaza

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

Read Palestine Week

🇵🇸 Good morning, my beautiful bookish bats. Can I start by saying a huge THANK YOU for sharing my Queer Palestinian Book post? Seriously, thank you so much. Let's keep that momentum by observing Read Palestine Week (Nov 29 - Dec 5). I've compiled a list of books to help you, along with a list of upcoming events and resources you can use this week and beyond.

🇵🇸 A collective of over 350 global publishers and individuals issued a public statement expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people. Publishers for Palestine have organized an international #ReadPalestine week, starting today (International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People).

🇵🇸 These publishers have made many resources and e-books available for free (with more to come). A few include award-winning fiction and poetry by Palestinian and Palestinian diaspora authors. You'll also find non-fiction books about Palestinian history, politics, arts, culture, and “books about organizing, resistance, and solidarity for a Free Palestine.” You can visit publishersforpalestine.org to download some of the books they have available.

POETRY 🌙 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha 🌙 Affiliation by Mira Mattar 🌙 Enemy of the Sun by Samih al-Qasim 🌙 I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti 🌙 A Mountainous Journey by Fadwa Tuqan 🌙 So What by Taha Muhammad Ali 🌙 The Butterfly’s Burden by Mahmoud Darwish 🌙 To All the Yellow Flowers by Raya Tuffaha

FICTION 🌙 Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury 🌙 Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales 🌙 Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani 🌙 Morning in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Gaze Writes Back by Young Writers in Gaze 🌙 Palestine +100:Stories from a Century after the Nakba 🌙 Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh 🌙 Out of Time by Samira Azzam

🌙 The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher 🌙 You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat 🌙 A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum 🌙 Salt Houses by Hala Alyan 🌙 A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar 🌙 Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa 🌙 Minor Detail by Adania Shibli 🌙 The Woman From Tantoura by Radwa Ashour

NON-FICTION 🌙 Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour 🌙 Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Palestinian Art, 1850–2005 by Kamal Boullata 🌙 Palestine by Joe Sacco 🌙 The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker by Sami Al Jundi & Jen Marlowe 🌙 Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha 🌙 Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat 🌙 The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine by Yousef Khalil Bashir

🌙 Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution by Hanan Karaman Munayyer 🌙 Mountain against the Sea: Essays on Palestinian Society and Culture by Salim Tamari 🌙 This Is Not a Border: Reportage and Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature 🌙 We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir, by Raja Shehadeh 🌙 Les échos de la mémoire. Une enfance palestinienne à Jérusalem, by Issa J. Boullata 🌙 A Party For Thaera: Palestinian Women Write Life In Prison 🌙 Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, 🌙 Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine

#free palestine #save palestine #books #book list #book recs #book recommendation #booklr #book blog #batty about books #battyaboutbooks #arab american heritage month #arab american writers #palestinian writers #palestinian poetry #poetry #poetry books #nonfiction #fiction books #queer fiction #queer community #queer books #muslim writers #read palestine week

[howieabel]

‘Every no a yes to not-this.’

— Mira Mattar, Yes I Am A Destroyer

[mep-hive]

PDFs of Bechaela Walker’s ‘The Blank, Stupid Face of a Tourist’ & Mira Mattar’s ‘Soft Close’ now up

‘The Blank, Stupid Face of a Tourist’

It happened in the city of Kraków: snow. I watched it fall through a column of yellow streetlight in the square. I tried to follow a single flake to the ground, but each time my eyes were drawn to the top of the column of light again. I thought of them all. It’s so difficult to feel any sort of connection, I said, and the snow stopped my echo. I often considered stepping in front of cars only to be injured a little. What is the point in describing my own debasement? I wanted all my friends in the same place: a city, a street, a commune. My ideas were ridiculous; I only got excited when I was tearing things apart. Scrolling through my contacts, trying to imagine his face. We couldn’t find the kind of music, the kind of group, the kind of friendship. We couldn’t find the kind of laughter, the kind of passion, the kind of relationships. We couldn’t find the kind of rent, the kind of love, the kind of system. Festivals had been arranged for our benefit. We had none of our own and were cynical about the ones we participated in. I tried to follow a single flake, but my eyes would not obey. How quiet everything had become, and for what.

‘Soft Close’

Our shoes are in an adorable pile by the back door. We run like children outside for fun and just in case. Doing the dishes her mother watches serenely, gladder by the plate they’d come here. Each item happily washed adds value. To us her face is mellow as our TV moms and we as sassy and rich as their daughters. Our hair as sleek and crimpable, raised above this lamentable frizz. Truly though it is relief not serenity that washes across her mother’s features. This home’s cruelty is softer than the last home’s cruelty. (It is the higher distribution of certainty that makes the weather here tolerable.) A slur in the end does not penetrate a body. And it is nice, after all, to be able to plan your own death. Information is a body wrapped in a flag and raised above the heaving crowd. Do our parents weep more regularly than our friends’ parents weep? Or is it always with the same abjection that infants view this? We do not enjoy missing Saturday morning TV only in order to better understand the cadences of their sorrows.

#small press #bechaela walker #mira mattar #Monster Emporium Press #short story

[nofatclips]

Tower of Glass. A short film by Ladytron, directed and written by Manuel Nogueira, starring Larissa Porto and Saulo Rocha. [Music video version]

#music #ladytron #mira aroyo #helen marnie #daniel hunt #reuben wu #edd hartwell #video #music video #short film #manuel nogueira #larissa porto #saulo rocha #juliano lopes #alma negrot #raphael santos #cadu cipolla luca #francinaldo lemos #luciana mattar #gustavo baldoni #helen lindsay marnie #мира аройо

[yourgayoldersister]

Thoughts

Does pining exercise the mind?

If I stay up another night wondering if we are women or if we are female or if we are one are we also the other or either or neither or what, apart from work and holes and tubes and circles in places, makes us so, will I be able to sleep the next night?

How to use the word ‘we’?

Have I lost something or found something by deciding that love is and has to be ordinary and neutral?

Does it ‘mean’ that in my dreams everyone is doing laundry all the time, that a happy pack of launderers as dedicated to unsoiling as they are to soiling are there smiling and singing?

Is it possible to be happy and homeless?

If I ever had to describe him on the radio so he could be found after the wreckage of a typhoon and I said, he is the one who is like no other, how would that help?

Why, when I see a girl plaiting her hair in the street, do I become ecstatic?

How can the too easy viciousness of family be borne?

#mira mattar

[erotoplasty]

Erotoplasty 7 (pt. 1)!

Issue 7 pt. 1 of Erotoplasty has emerged, thereby initiating the zine’s staggered valediction! This moiety of the meal is chock-full of all the essential vitamins and yet-to-be-discovered minerals one might(’nt) expect to find in Allen Fisher, Nisha Ramayya, Tongo Eisen-Martin, RTA Parker & Jèssica Pujol, Tom Crompton, Patrick Farmer & Trevor Simmons, Ed Luker, Mira Mattar, John M. Bennett, Fred Carter, Cleo Madeleine & Blythe Zarozinia Aimson, Lotte L.S., Jeff Hilson, Tommy Peeps, Maz Himyari, Mendoza, Sam Weselowski, Marcia Knight-Latter & Julia Rose Lewis, Kathryn Hummel, Maria Sledmere, Cai Draper, Paul Ingram, Antony John, Simon Marsh & Peter Hughes, Catherine Vidler & Tom Jenks, Kayleigh Cassidy, Wayne Clements, William Fuller, Duncan MacKay, Karol Kramer & Nico Vassilakis, John Wilkinson, T. Person, Eileen Tabios, and upfromsumdirt. Get ready to gourmandise!

Download the PDF here.

(Part 2 is currently hurtling towards tomorrow!)

[garadinervi]

PROTOTYPE 2, Edited by Jess Chandler, Prototype Publishing, London, 2020. Design: Theo Inglis. Cover Art: Sinae Park

Feat. Astrid Alben, Caroline Bergvall, Linda Black, Lochlan Bloom, Iain Britton, Sam Buchan-Watts, Hisham Bustani, Theodoros Chiotis, Cathleen Allyn Conway, Emily Critchley, Claire Crowther, Susannah Dickey, Tim Dooley, Olivia Douglass, Michael Egan, Gareth Evans, Aisha Farr, Miruna Fulgeanu, Mark Goodwin, Philip Hancock, Oli Hazzard, Hoagy Houghton, Dominic Jaeckle, Aaron Kent, Caleb Klaces, Lotte L.S., Ali Lewis, Jazmine Linklater, Rupert Loydell, Alex MacDonald, Helen Marten, Mira Mattar, Otis Mensah, Lucy Mercer, Vanessa Onwuemezi, Sinae Park, Molly Ellen Pearson, Meryl Pugh, Elizabeth Reeder, Leonie Rushforth, Lavinia Singer, Maria Sledmere, Maria Stadnicka, Maia Tabet, Amanda Thomson, Donya Todd, David & Lizzy Turner, Sarah Tweed, Anne Vegter, Ahren Warner and Oliver Zarandi

#graphic design #typography #art #poetry #book #cover #book cover #prototype #jess chandler #theo inglis #sinae park #prototype publishing #test centre #house sparrow press #2020s

[juliacalver]

On Care

New writing, Three Troughs, published in On Care.

Care is an imperative, and acting with care approaches the world beyond selfhood.

Contributors: Tom Allen, Uma Breakdown, Alice Butler, Oisín Byrne, Julia Calver, Jamie Crewe, Juliette Desorgues, Rachel Genn, Laura Godfrey-Isaacs, Laura González, Holly Graham, Helen Hester, Justin Hogg, Juliet Jacques, Mati Jhurry & Rebecca Jagoe, Juliet Johnson, Sophie Jung, Daisy Lafarge, Elisabeth Lebovici, Rebecca Lennon, Rona Lorimer, Katharina Ludwig, Mira Mattar, Martina Mullaney, Cinzia Mutigli, Carolina Ongaro, Molly Palmer, Roy Claire Potter, Nat Raha, Helena Reckitt, Ruiz Stephinson, Erica Scourti, Victoria Sin, Himali Singh Soin & Tyler Rai, Miguel Soto Karlovic,  Isabella Streffen, Jamie Sutcliffe, Maija Timonen, Lynn Turner, Rosa-Johan Uddoh, Daniella Valz Gen, Nina Wakeford, Alberta Whittle

MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE

[tories-out-propaganda-unit]

It’s been six months since the U.K. general election. We started this anthology as a way of thinking through what came out of that election, why we had bothered campaigning so hard for Labour when we were hardly great believers in parliamentary democracy in the first place, and what it meant to come to terms with the reality of another 5 years of Conservative governing in the already existing racist shithole that is ‘Great’ Britain. Seems pretty small fry now as we live in the contradictions of a global pandemic disproportionately killing Black and Brown people while mass protests against the murder of Black people in police custody actually bring forth a reality of the once seemingly impossible abolition of the police. 

So this anthology is maybe more than a bit out of date. But it’s still a document of what the fuck was going on back then, and perhaps in some way reflective on how we find ourselves now.  

With contributions from: Tom Allen, Toby Bull, Sophie Carapetian, Miri Davidson, Gloria Dawson, Peter Ely, Alva Gotby, Aurelia Guo, Danny Hayward, Sam Keogh, Vlada Maria, Mira Mattar, Jessa Mockridge, Daniel Neofetou, Ben Polhill, Julian Pritchard, Ralph Pritchard, Ash Reid, Hannah Schling, Erica Scourti, Ben Seymour, Chris Timms, Ishbel Tunnadine, Laurel Uziell

How To Win (PDF)

How To Win (PDF - Alternative Link)

[kitchen-light]

Mira Mattar, from her poem 'Affiliation', and from a section that was published at Granta Mag, March 2021. You can read the section here. The full book length poem is available from Sad Press here.

#mira mattar #poetry #typography #words #palestine #found* #space

[her-moth]

london / april 20th / come

#poetry #natasha allden #mira mattar #erica scourti #verity spott #florence uniacke #laurel uziell

[zarfpoetry]

dear readers & friends of zarf,

i’m pleased to say that Zarf #13 is now available to order from zarfpoetry.tumblr.com ! 

with poetry by meenah williams, kashif sharma-patel, virna teixeira (translated by shelly bhoil), april hill, gemma jackson, jay g. ying, derawan rahmantavy, lisa samuels, jessica tillings, edmund hardy, jade mars, nell osborne, and mira mattar 

– plus gloria dawson reviews caspar heinemann, kashif sharma-patel reviews sandeep parmar, nisha ramayya, and bhanu kapil, and colin lee marshall reviews aurelia guo.

as always it’s £2 inc p&p (£3 overseas), but if you don’t have the cash to spare drop me a line.

much love,

callie xxx

#zarf #poetry #magazine #poetry publishing #small press #books

[hemanchong]

Here is a feature article published by @leapmag and written by the wonderful @ancarujoiu! Thank you @robinpeckham for commissioning it! “Chong’s practice is a quest for writing, an exploration of its desires and disenchantments as well as the conditions that constitute it. Situating the practice of writing in the wider field of #knowledge and discourse, he creates platforms—#libraries, #bookstores, #workshops—that make #writing possible. Beginning this process in 2006, Chong gathered artists and writers (Mark Aerial Waller, Cosmin Costinas, Rosemary Heather, Francis McKee, David Reinfurt, Steve Rushton, and Leif Magne-Tangen) to write an entire science fiction novel, entitled PHILIP, in seven days at @projectartscentre, in Dublin. In 2017, he continued by convening with four other artists (Benjamin Seror, Isabel Nolan, Travis Jeppesen, and Maria Taniguchi) in London for a 20-hour writing workshop hosted by @launchpadart , which eventually led to the publication Writing: Cabin Fever. Two years earlier, as part of his solo exhibition at @southlondongallery, he invited three writers (Mira Mattar, Natasha Soobramanien, and Luke Williams) to use one of the gallery’s spaces as a private working area. With a free writing space, the writers also received a stipend, without the expectation of any outcome. The artist frames this collaboration as a gift to the writers. This gesture of generosity highlights a flaw in the contemporary art world (one among many). While art writing has flourished in recent years, producing new authors, new genres, and new publishing platforms, as well as entering academia, it remains the undervalued fellow of the art world. In an article addressing the expansion of writing in this context, John Douglas Millar comments that writers “accept that they will not make much money” while enjoying a welcoming readership and, I would add, a space for experimentation allowed by the art scene. By creating space and time for writing and striving for commensurate economic remuneration, #HemanChong’s work is a defense of writing as an intellectual and artistic pursuit in which to invest one’s life.” (at 72-13) https://www.instagram.com/p/CT104P8FgXn/?utm_medium=tumblr

#knowledge #libraries #bookstores #workshops #writing #hemanchong

[thinkingimages]

Anguish Language Writing and Crisis

Launch of the anthology Anguish Language: Writing and Crisis, edited by John Cunningham, Anthony Iles, Mira Mattar and Marina Vishmidt. On the occasion of the presentation the editors will be joined by contributors Sean Bonney, Karolin Meunier & Mattin.

Anguish Language approaches language as a core aspect of the present social crisis. The project engages in solidarity with forms of self-publishing, poetry, criticism, experimental writing and declamation that have arisen in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, considering language among and through the social struggles responding to its consequences.

#Anguish Language: Writing and Crisis #Social Struggles #Social Issues #Language #Social Crisis #Books