Dunya Mikhail, Iraqi-American poet, was born in Baghdad in 1965 and left Iraq to the US (Michigan) in mid 1990s. She has worked as a journalist for “The Baghdad Observer” and her work was found “subversive.” She was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing in 2001, and her translator, Elizabeth Winslow, won a 2004 Pen Translation Fund Award. Her first book in English, The War Works Hard (New Directions 2005, Carcanet 2006) was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize and was named one of the 25 books to remember in 2005 by the New York Public Library. It was also translated into Italian by Elena Chiti. Mikhail’s Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea (New Directions, NY, 2009) won the 2010 Arab American Book Award. Her new book “The Iraqi Nights” is translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and is out from New Directions (2014).
Dunya Mikhail
Articles by Dunya Mikhail
Wednesday February 11
Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea
Of all my letters, there was one that I read again and again.
It was a love letter. Of all my pictures,
there was one that I stared at for long stretches:
Mazin and I at college, with two of our friends.
Arwa and Hassan introduced me to Mazin
when he was visiting from the battlefield in Al-Faw.
Sunday February 11
Pronouns
He plays a train.
She plays a whistle.
They move away.
He plays a rope.
She plays a tree.
They swing.
Sunday February 11
Nothing Here is Enough
I need veiled eyelids,
black lines,
and ruined puppets
to make geography.
I need a sky wider than longing,
and water that is not H2O
to make wings.