A debut collection in English by an Arabic poet whose prose poems engage with what it’s been like to be a woman and live in Iraq during the last two decades, particularly amid battles with the Islamic State and other dangerous entities.

I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar is Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmad Jabr’s first solo collection in English, following the release of her celebrated, collaborative, bilingual collection Where do you live? أين تعيشين؟. In her astonishing new book, Jabr excavates the years she survived Iraq’s endless battles with the Islamic State and other nefarious forces.

Jabr’s prose poems, what readers of English would call free verse, often seem starkly sensual and relational, though the featured “he” may mean the “homeland” or “Mosul” itself, which betrays its “lovers” with a lust for war. Hands, tea, refusals, betrayals, loneliness, and the scent of jasmine: these themes, and more, are revisited, teased out, plumbed, and spun around by a singular, penetrating personality.

Hanaa Ahmad Jabr lives in Mosul, Iraq. She is a prize-winning poet and short story writer who has participated in critical conferences and international poetry festivals. She has a PhD of Philosophy in Arabic Literature and is a professor at the University of Mosul. Jabr cowrote and co-translated Where Do You Live? أين تعيشين؟ a Correspondence in Arabic and English Poems, along with American poet Jennifer Jean.

Jennifer Jean’s poetry collections include The Pacific and The Fool and the chapbooks VOZ, Object Lesson, and In the War. She is also the author of Object Lesson: A Guide to Writing Poetry. Jean is the editor of Other Paths for Shahrazad: a Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women and the series editor of Songs for Fairuz: New Arab Women's Poetry. She is an organizer for the Her Story Is collective, a faculty member at Solstice MFA, and a senior program manager at the Fine Arts Work Center. She lives in Salem, MA.

Wadaq Qais lives in Basra, Iraq. She co-translated the collaborative, bilingual collection Where Do You Live? أين تعيش؟ a Correspondence in Arabic and English Poems (Arrowsmith Press) and is a member of the Her Story Is collective.