Introduction by Zena Agha
These poems were written during the fever dream of maternity leave—moving between the intimate and the political, confronting the grief and joy of becoming a parent during global catastrophe and facing the question of what it means to herald life in a time of genocide.
In these selected works, I navigate two parallel but overlapping ruptures: the birth of a child and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Two Teeth and Four Teeth track the passage of time—not by weeks and months, but by the slow, insistent emergence of the baby’s teeth as war rages on. Those events became intimately intertwined—and these poems explore the disorientation of that.
Looking With and Victoria Embankment Gardens are more legible, yet no less fractured. Both underpinned by colonial violence—in the past and today, these poems draw a line between British colonialism and Zionists’ ongoing colonization of Palestine, two brutal forces inextricably linked, preternaturally and at birth. What emerges from these poems, is an exploration of those contradictory, intertwined histories and experiences.
