come from - janan alexandra

Foreword by Ross GayHere is a collection that pulses with warmth and vitality, heralding the arrival of a fresh and vibrant voice on the poetry scene. Clear and concise, accessible and profound, janan alexandra’s debut poetry collection come from weaves from English to Arabic, exploring the joint projects of longing and belonging.Part love song for the speaker’s mother and part grief song for

ongoing postcolonial loss, this book reaches for, around, and

through language—feeling for its limits and possibilities. come from searches for what might be possible if we dislodge our practices of belonging, divest from nation and state, and instead turn deeply toward each other. Drawing

on both narrative and lyric impulses, alexandra invites readers into a world

bristling with family, memory, home, and inheritance—all in the wake of

dislocation and fracture. In one section of the book, we follow the speaker

“back home” after years of separation; later, we encounter a series of parables

in the form of an Arabic abecedarian, through which the speaker recovers parts

of her mother tongue—invoking

personal and communal histories marked with the longue durée of empire.come from investigates

what is deeply interior while reaching toward the world with tenderness and

generous attention.