La Syrena: Visions of a Syrian Mermaid from Space by Banah el Ghadbanah
Winner of the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize
LA SYRENA. Home is in the water. When I go to the sea I want to swim forever and never look back. But I know I would die and the earth needs me on shore. My home is Syria and Syria for me is like the sea. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim around forever. In Syria I am declared wanted, like so many of us displaced lunar divas. The longing I feel is the deepest kind. It could crack the whole earth open. I am a Lumerian from Ancient Sumeria, a southern space creature in a northern world, LA SYRENA, zhe is my destiny.
In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of Arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform. This book is a hybrid creature between poem-story-form that crosses genres like it crosses dimensions. In this work, you are the mermaid. You are the forever migrant, a traveler between the oceanic and the extraterrestrial, across continents and planets. You are a time traveler, and you speak many languages. You are LA SYRENA, conjuring your own space to feel free.
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Paperback: 240 pages
ISBN: 9781950539444
Also available as an eBook
Winner of the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize
LA SYRENA. Home is in the water. When I go to the sea I want to swim forever and never look back. But I know I would die and the earth needs me on shore. My home is Syria and Syria for me is like the sea. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim around forever. In Syria I am declared wanted, like so many of us displaced lunar divas. The longing I feel is the deepest kind. It could crack the whole earth open. I am a Lumerian from Ancient Sumeria, a southern space creature in a northern world, LA SYRENA, zhe is my destiny.
In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of Arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform. This book is a hybrid creature between poem-story-form that crosses genres like it crosses dimensions. In this work, you are the mermaid. You are the forever migrant, a traveler between the oceanic and the extraterrestrial, across continents and planets. You are a time traveler, and you speak many languages. You are LA SYRENA, conjuring your own space to feel free.
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Paperback: 240 pages
ISBN: 9781950539444
Also available as an eBook
Winner of the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize
LA SYRENA. Home is in the water. When I go to the sea I want to swim forever and never look back. But I know I would die and the earth needs me on shore. My home is Syria and Syria for me is like the sea. I want nothing more than to jump in and swim around forever. In Syria I am declared wanted, like so many of us displaced lunar divas. The longing I feel is the deepest kind. It could crack the whole earth open. I am a Lumerian from Ancient Sumeria, a southern space creature in a northern world, LA SYRENA, zhe is my destiny.
In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of Arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform. This book is a hybrid creature between poem-story-form that crosses genres like it crosses dimensions. In this work, you are the mermaid. You are the forever migrant, a traveler between the oceanic and the extraterrestrial, across continents and planets. You are a time traveler, and you speak many languages. You are LA SYRENA, conjuring your own space to feel free.
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Paperback: 240 pages
ISBN: 9781950539444
Also available as an eBook
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LA SYRENA
“Banah el Ghadbanah has written a collection that is bold and elegant, formally daring, and on every page poetic. La Syrena is a true work of art by an ambitious and captivating artist.” —Robert Lopez, author of A Better Class of People
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Banah el Ghadbanah holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies and researches Syrian women’s creativity in the face of occupation and regime violence. They are published in Mizna, the Women’s Review of Books, Poetry Northwest, and Afghan Punk Magazine, among others. Banah loves bellydance, eating mangoes, and lazing by the sea.
