Description

Poems of loss and liberation, the body and the human spirit: the astonishing debut collection from Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen

‘In this book, I am collecting the parts of myself I have found, in case there isn’t anyone there to do so if I am killed.’

Each of the forty-eight poems assembled in this startling bilingual collection represents a single kilogram of a body’s mass. In spare, stark language, Abu Akleen writes of a city under siege and a self under constant assault, articulating the personal and the public in the midst of unspeakable violence. 48kg immortalizes her voice and, in doing so, reaches out for a space of shared humanity.

‘One of the most viscerally affecting collections of poems I have ever read. Devastatingly precise and unforgettable images emerge from every line… What is happening in Gaza is a genocide not a war, but not since Akhmatova have I read poetry that so potently reckons with the relationship between war and the body. They create a new category of literary grace out of the cataclysm. These are poems of fire and agony, bombing and starvation, but they are also poems of grace, cleverness, tenderness and yearning. A great international poet arrives with this collection, but it is also a landmark work of resistance. No human should have to write their poetry from inside death’s dominion, but Batool Abu Akleen has done it, and the result is truly astonishing.’ -Max Porter

Translated from Arabic by the poet (with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti and Yasmin Zaher), edited by Dominic J. Jaeckle and Cristina Viti, and published in collaboration with Tenement Press.

Publisher Review

One of the most viscerally affecting collections of poems I have ever read. Devastatingly precise and unforgettable images emerge from every line… What is happening in Gaza is a genocide not a war, but not since Akhmatova have I read poetry that so potently reckons with the relationship between war and the body. They create a new category of literary grace out of the cataclysm. These are poems of fire and agony, bombing and starvation, but they are also poems of grace, cleverness, tenderness and yearning. A great international poet arrives with this collection, but it is also a landmark work of resistance. No human should have to write their poetry from inside death’s dominion, but Batool Abu Akleen has done it, and the result is truly astonishing * Max Porter * Objects and emotions tangle brilliantly in these searing poems. It’s terrible that Abu Akleen has atrocities to write about, and how well she does it * Caryl Churchill * Written in Gaza between 2023 and 2025, Abu Akleen’s poems disassemble and painstakingly reassemble the body to interrogate injustice, death and grief. She creates a world where absurdity and reality, irony and humanity coexist-from the ice-cream man crying out ‘corpses for sale’ while noting that ‘no grave buys them,’ to death wanting to have a birthday party and picking ‘an arm the missile hadn’t shattered’ …. Throughout 48Kg, Abu Akleen transforms witnessed details into fragile interpretations …. She notes that poetry gives ‘a form to feelings in order to understand them,’ and these heartbreaking and risk-taking poems protest with uncompromising clarity and tenderness against continuing atrocities — Kit Fan * The Guardian * Abu Akleen is becoming one of Gaza’s most vivid and unstinting witnesses — Claire Armistead * The Guardian * Batool Abu Akleen has written the impossible thing-an unbelievably hard portrayal in poems of the daily attack on Gaza while living inside it-and her poems warp and play relentlessly with language in all its rare contrarity, its entire animal ancient, while sharing the inky humour and sweetness of her own new poet’s practice. For me, only Etel Adnan’s Arab Apocalypse can be compared to 48kg in its biting frankness and bravery; her words are coming straight from today. * Eileen Myles * This collection by a brave extraordinarily gifted Palestinian woman, wise beyond her years, is a searing and urgent cry of the heart and conscience; a call to wake the world up to itself. Batool Abu Akleen’s fierce love for her country and people are thunderbolts of compassion and power, and the relevance of poetry is never stronger than in her luminous details of life and struggle. We live within a crisis of humanity, and we need her antidote; a shield against cruelty and silence in the disaster narratives of War. There must be poetry and consciousness after atrocity. You will weep and will weep and weep again. You will want to stop the world. * Anne Waldman * The poets of Palestine have become vital archivists. In 48Kg Batool Abu Akleen not only provides brute testimony of the Genocide committed by Israel against her people, but by her inventiveness and surreality, by the barbed humour and bitter irony of her voice, and the tender revelation and humane wisdom of her work, she defiantly gives voice and futurity to Palestinian life. She writes that she waits for death, ‘like a mother expecting her newborn’ telling us ‘I will scream / I will feel his head coming out of my body.’ No one should have to write these incredible, haunting lines, but everyone should read them. This is an extraordinary book of poetry * Jack Underwood * These poems witness dispossession so profound, the poet longs even for certainty that her body will rest in a grave. This searing fact is the heart of 48Kg * Anne Michaels * Batool Abu Akleen’s roaming verse contemplates whether absurdism is the only language we have left to express this vicious genocide — Hasib Hourani Batool Abu Akleen’s poetry is both tragic and eloquent. No words can convey Gaza’s ordeal, but her spare verses give it a life and meaning beyond words. The lines compel the reader’s attention and empathy * Ghada Karmi *