A review by anudbe
Your Crib, My Qibla by Saddiq Dzukogi
5.0
Many thanks to Netgalley and University of Nebraska Press for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
"It bites him hard that your life happened / like an hourglass with only a handful of sand"
I honestly didn't think I would spend 2 weeks reading this book, I kept stalling, each poem was pregnant with so much sorrow and grief to the highest, purest extent. An extent I knew I'm not a stable enough vessel to withstand. I could not read more than 5 poems before rendering myself useless for that entire day. some days I just stopped reading.
I'm an empath and I actually thought I would be more susceptible to the grief bleeding from these poems, but I know now it was not just me, but it was the amount of emotions these poems are packed with.
"His psalm is refusing to grow in his heart. The pigeons no longer come to the windowpane, just bats and dead butterflies."
These poems were so beautiful yet so painful. No wonder the author decided to write them as a 3rd person, I understand writing about trauma and how we separate ourselves from the most painful situations by being another person writing our own stories.
I don't know if this is appropriate but I send my condolences to you Saddiq Dzukogi.
"It bites him hard that your life happened / like an hourglass with only a handful of sand"
I honestly didn't think I would spend 2 weeks reading this book, I kept stalling, each poem was pregnant with so much sorrow and grief to the highest, purest extent. An extent I knew I'm not a stable enough vessel to withstand. I could not read more than 5 poems before rendering myself useless for that entire day. some days I just stopped reading.
I'm an empath and I actually thought I would be more susceptible to the grief bleeding from these poems, but I know now it was not just me, but it was the amount of emotions these poems are packed with.
"His psalm is refusing to grow in his heart. The pigeons no longer come to the windowpane, just bats and dead butterflies."
These poems were so beautiful yet so painful. No wonder the author decided to write them as a 3rd person, I understand writing about trauma and how we separate ourselves from the most painful situations by being another person writing our own stories.
I don't know if this is appropriate but I send my condolences to you Saddiq Dzukogi.