Syrena in Space

(Paperback)

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Winner of the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize
LA SYRENA. For me 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 SYRNENA, zhe is my destiny.

In this collection, each poem flows like water on the page. The author weaves in stories mantras revolutionary messages the movement of arabic letters 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.

Author Bio

Banah el Ghadbanah holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies and researches Syrian womens creativity in the face of occupation and regime violence. They are published in Mizna, the Womens Review of Books, Poetry Northwest, and Afghan Punk Magazine, among others. Banah loves bellydance, eating mangoes, and lazing by the sea.