Insomnia

by Kristine Ong Muslim

Kristine Ong Muslim is a contemporary goddess of poetry. She compels us to enter unique realms of metaphorical magnanimity to spaces—here and now—of sociological profundity. Her style is varied yet marked by manifest visions. Muslim's verse exudes a distinguished type of deliverance that exalts the reader into an enlightened being of reprieve. “The ocean is an oversized boat, which is also a ripple, which is/also a memory of a submerged continent.” “This girl collects shipwrecks and coffee mugs,/green bottles and bone folders—things which/cannot be inherited.”

Genres: Poetry

35 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Kristine Ong Muslim is the author of The Drone Outside (Eibonvale Press, 2017), Black Arcadia (University of the Philippines Press, 2017), Meditations of a Beast (Cornerstone Press, 2016), Butterfly Dream (Snuggly Books, 2016), Age of Blight (Unnamed Press, 2016), and several other books of fiction and poetry. She co-edited numerous anthologies of fiction, including Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. (Penguin Random House SEA, 2022), Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines (Gaudy Boy, 2021), and the British Fantasy Award-winning People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! (2016). Her translation of Amado Anthony G. Mendoza III’s novel, Book of the Damned, won a 2023 PEN/Heim grant. She is also the translator of nine books by Filipino authors Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles, Rogelio Braga, and Marlon Hacla. Widely anthologized, Muslim’s short stories were published in Conjunctions, Dazed, and World Literature Today and translated into Bulgarian, Czech, German, Japanese, Polish, and Serbian. She lives in a small farmhouse in Sitio Magutay, a remote rural highland area in Maguindanao, Philippines.

Reviews

[Rise · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of poems, Muslim's whimsical voice is profoundly wedded to her arresting images. She is a poet who sees miracles in the mundane and whose way with language is unobstructed. Her lines stun and mystify. They often deliver the punch that is felt hard in the gut. “You wonder whether you are the landscape or the one taking in the scenery. You wonder why the shadows of curved things remain straight”, she wrote at one point.

Full review here.

[kento · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insomnia is a collection of poems written in blank verse form. I like the way how the author uses a unique writing style that slowly paints a picture in the reader's mind. I personally liked the poems "G is for Gillian", "Twenty years of searching for little teddy", "No Possibility of Waking Up", and "The Missing Girl". After reading this book, I became more interested in poetry. It is a book of poems worth reading. :D

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kristine Ong-Muslim's work is mesmerizing! Any book you read by her is a winner!