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Quick before the story ebbs away. There are things I need to tell you A work of great strength and equal delicacy, Mouth transports us to a world where violence hangs in the air, where beauty, pity and cruelty intertwine. The sequence at its heart, Palace , takes the overlooked women from the edges of Greek tragedy and places them centre stage, to tell unforgettable stories of survival and loss. With new depth and force, their voices set off echoes with women navigating the terrible reality and aftermath of war today. As a human rights lawyer, Arshi saw power and its abuses, the structures of silencing set against refugees. As a poet, she charts the movements and migrations that change the course of our lives - from child to adult, from home to elsewhere, from grief to what lies beyond. Mouth is a complex and original study of speaking''s limitations, chasms in communication, but also the unexpected power of silence: ''sometimes / language picks us clean''.
About the author
Mona Arshi’s debut poetry collection, Small Hands, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2015. Her second collection, Dear Big Gods, was published in 2019 and her novel Somebody Loves You in 2021; the latter was shortlisted for the Goldsmith Prize. She has been appointed as Honorary Professor at the University of Liverpool and Fellow in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, and is also co-editor of an anthology of nature poetry, Nature Matters, which will be published in 2025. Prior to her career in poetry, she worked as a human rights lawyer, often representing refugees and women fleeing domestic violence.
