Mikhail’s poetry- so pure and beautiful- is the best of her generation.

Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq in 1965 and came to the United States in 1996. She has seven books in Arabic some of which are translated into English, Italian, and Chinese. They include The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea, and The War Works Hard. She also edited a pamphlet of Iraqi poetry titled 15 Iraqi Poets. They are translated into English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Elizabeth Winslow, and into Italian by Elena Chiti.

Her honors include the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. The War Works Hard was shortlisted for Griffin, and named one of “Twenty-Five Books to Remember from 2005” by the New York Public Library. She is the co-founder of Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture in Michigan. She currently works as an Arabic special lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan. Read more http://dunyamikhailpoet.com

When will there be another society that produces poets in Mikhail’s tradition? If you want to understand how disastrously an ancient culture has been affected by its recent history, this poem will tell you more than any film clips, news stories or books about Middle Eastern battles. Sometimes verse becomes the only language adequateto express the struggles of evolution or the depredations of human conflict.

Mikhail’s work is emotionally uplifting. Her style mentions an impressive fragility and delicacy of image that touches the reader’s heart. Indeed, her trademark utmost lucidity of picture is tinged by a radiance of tone that we feel unmistakably spills over from the original language.