Inaugural Collection from Palstinian-American Poet Deema Shehabi
(Winston-Salem, NC) March 8, 2011—Press 53 announces the publication of Thirteen Departures From the Moon by Deema K. Shehabi, an award-winning Palestinian-American poet from California. This extraordinary volume comprises lyric poems that are searching explorations of a poet’s place in the world. Narrating from a unique angle of perception, Ms. Shehabi reflects on the exiled spaces of her youth and adulthood. Her poems are aesthetic responses to straddling varying cultures.
"This first book of poems, Thirteen Departures from the Moon, is a culmination of 20 years of exile," Ms. Shehabi told Huffington Post in an interview. "It's about finding home in a seemingly impermanent situation---both in the metaphysical and literal sense.
It was only when I turned to poetry that I found comfort because it anchored me in my exile. It provided me with respite from that gnawing feeling of loss."
Deema K. Shehabi's poems root themselves in Gaza and travel through the entire breadth of the Palestinian diaspora. Herein are the stories of a displaced family—a metaphor for a displaced nation—passed down, passed down, passed down and told through the lush imagery of the Arab streets, the Gaza orchards, the fertile streams, all witnessed by the moon.
"Deema Shehabi's map is huge and deep as she weaves the threads of landscape, earth and sky, into a cloth wide enough to cover everyone," says poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
"With a stunning lyrical gift of seeing and knowing, she walks the wide world through language that redeems and blesses. Her poems are crucial, passionate, magnificent.
"Each poem in this collection is a clear, honest yet intensely transformed communication, dripping with a honey-like sweetness of literary gifts," says poet Annie Finch of Thirteen Departures From the Moon.
Thirteen Departures From the Moon
Poems by Deema K. Shehabi
Publication date: March 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-935708-23-0
Size: 8.5 x 5.5 inch paperback, 92 pages
Price: US $12.00
Press 53 books are distributed throughout the United States by Ingram and are available wherever fine books are sold, including www.Press53.com. Kevin Watson is Publisher. Tom Lombardo is Poetry Series Editor.
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