In Her Feminine Sign

Mikhail Dunya

At the heart of "In Her Feminine Sign", Dunya Mikhail's luminous new collection of poems, is the Arabic suffix taamarbuta, "the tied circle" – a circle with two dots above it that indicates a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. With a deceptive simplicity and disquieting humour reminiscent of Wis³awa Szymborska, and a lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail slips between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, tracing new circles of light.

About the Author

Dunya Mikhail was born in 1965 and educated at Baghdad University. She worked as Literary Editor for "The Baghdad Observer". Facing increasing harassment from the authorities for her writings, Mikhail left her native Iraq in the 1990s, travelling first to Jordan, and then the US, where she studied Near Eastern Studies at Wayne State University. She speaks and writes in Arabic, Aramaic and English. In 2001, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She has published four collections in Arabic, and one lyrical, multi-genre text, "The Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea".

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