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Atrium: Poems
In Atrium, award-winning Palestinian-American poet Hala Alyan traces lines of global issues in personal spaces, with fervently original imagery, and a fierce passion and intense intimacy that echoes long after initial reading.
The book received the 2013 Arab American Book of the Year Award for Poetry, an astounding achievement for a first collection. In addition, Alyan was recently tapped as a finalist in the Nazim Himet Poetry Competition.
Already in her young career, Alyan has etched her mark on other award-winning poets who are universal in their praise: “Don't miss the dazzling Hala Alyan. Wow. When she says ‘the poetry like a spear,’ she isn't kidding.” —Naomi Shihab Nye; “Hala Alyan’s poems startle us with their beautiful, enigmatic images and capture us with their passionate engagement with the world. A powerful debut.” —Chitra Divakaruni; “For all the stunning angularity in this vision, we do not doubt that what we are seeing and sensing here is a surprising, sharp-edged sense of the real, of a world that had been there all along, just waiting for this poet and these poems to reveal. Start to finish, these poems convey a singular vision and represent an important new voice in the international poetry arena.” —Fred Marchant
Hala Alyan's Atrium is truly a remarkable debut by a poet of stunning virtuosity and range.
The book received the 2013 Arab American Book of the Year Award for Poetry, an astounding achievement for a first collection. In addition, Alyan was recently tapped as a finalist in the Nazim Himet Poetry Competition.
Already in her young career, Alyan has etched her mark on other award-winning poets who are universal in their praise: “Don't miss the dazzling Hala Alyan. Wow. When she says ‘the poetry like a spear,’ she isn't kidding.” —Naomi Shihab Nye; “Hala Alyan’s poems startle us with their beautiful, enigmatic images and capture us with their passionate engagement with the world. A powerful debut.” —Chitra Divakaruni; “For all the stunning angularity in this vision, we do not doubt that what we are seeing and sensing here is a surprising, sharp-edged sense of the real, of a world that had been there all along, just waiting for this poet and these poems to reveal. Start to finish, these poems convey a singular vision and represent an important new voice in the international poetry arena.” —Fred Marchant
Hala Alyan's Atrium is truly a remarkable debut by a poet of stunning virtuosity and range.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2012
1 person is currently reading
327 people want to read
About the author
Hala Alyan
18 books1,143 followersHala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and grew up in Kuwait, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon. She earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and an MA from Columbia University. While completing her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, she specialized in trauma and addiction work with various populations.
Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.
She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).
Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry; Four Cities (2015); Hijra (2016), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019); and The Moon That Turns You Back (2024).
She co-edited the poetry anthology We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (2023) with poet Zeina Hashem Beck.
Alyan has also been awarded a Lannan Foundation fellowship and her poems have appeared in numerous journals and literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Jewish Currents,The New York Times Book Review, Prairie Schooner and Colorado Review.
Alyan is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU. She resides in Brooklyn with her family.
Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.
She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).
Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab American Book Award in Poetry; Four Cities (2015); Hijra (2016), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry; The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019); and The Moon That Turns You Back (2024).
She co-edited the poetry anthology We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (2023) with poet Zeina Hashem Beck.
Alyan has also been awarded a Lannan Foundation fellowship and her poems have appeared in numerous journals and literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Jewish Currents,The New York Times Book Review, Prairie Schooner and Colorado Review.
Alyan is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at NYU. She resides in Brooklyn with her family.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 13, 2025
hala alyan continues to be—even when incomprehensible to me—deeply electric and a prime example of movement in verse (the bounding strides that occur within a few of her lines are so impressive to me, as someone who struggles not to tunnel into the minute in writing).
July 23, 2018
There's something of a fast moving bushfire in these poems, or a snare drum attack. Quite a few of them are sparse and confrontational, obscurely formatted and held together by a supercategory of references like star signs or types of rocks. They can be quite uncompromising; but the craft delivers enough singular vision to keep the appetite strong.
The start of "Sahar & Her Sisters" is representative of her intensity and some of her cultural vocabulary and perspective. It will also forever change how I view starfish:
"Ink-haired quartet, born summers apart, they left / their mother gasping, mouth dry. Womb limp / as a starfish. Their father set fire to the midwife after the // fourth, rammed into his wife bark etched with holy verses / to free her of the cancer that is girl. This is what is meant by setting. / Sahar and her sisters move like snakes through the seasons, cinder- // eyed, dizzy-hearted."
You'll need to get used to transitioning from palpable narrative like the above to some more surreal contributions:
"1. Ink has an enemy in snow.
2. Mud makes walking harder.
3. Grief turns July into a mango, gutted out and rotten."
The gender politics are well handled throughout: tough, wounded, witty, and reasonably body positive. There's almost a detachment in Hala's cleverness and references--armor or artifice or something. From what I can tell, her later volumes soften somewhat, bristle somewhat less--retaining all the necessary power. But the energy of this volume, its jaggedness, is a pleasure.
The collection's title may come from the memorable stanzas that end another classically titled poem, "Desiderium"
"Counting coins
in an atrium,
I am lovely.
Caught unaware,
I am a thing
to be touched."
And, one of my favorite single line descriptions of a relationship: "She melon-slices. You platter."
The start of "Sahar & Her Sisters" is representative of her intensity and some of her cultural vocabulary and perspective. It will also forever change how I view starfish:
"Ink-haired quartet, born summers apart, they left / their mother gasping, mouth dry. Womb limp / as a starfish. Their father set fire to the midwife after the // fourth, rammed into his wife bark etched with holy verses / to free her of the cancer that is girl. This is what is meant by setting. / Sahar and her sisters move like snakes through the seasons, cinder- // eyed, dizzy-hearted."
You'll need to get used to transitioning from palpable narrative like the above to some more surreal contributions:
"1. Ink has an enemy in snow.
2. Mud makes walking harder.
3. Grief turns July into a mango, gutted out and rotten."
The gender politics are well handled throughout: tough, wounded, witty, and reasonably body positive. There's almost a detachment in Hala's cleverness and references--armor or artifice or something. From what I can tell, her later volumes soften somewhat, bristle somewhat less--retaining all the necessary power. But the energy of this volume, its jaggedness, is a pleasure.
The collection's title may come from the memorable stanzas that end another classically titled poem, "Desiderium"
"Counting coins
in an atrium,
I am lovely.
Caught unaware,
I am a thing
to be touched."
And, one of my favorite single line descriptions of a relationship: "She melon-slices. You platter."
February 26, 2023
“Menses:
Rorschach on unsuspecting airplane seat. Pennyluck.”
After some thought, upgrading to five stars.
Admittedly, Part 1 was a slow read for me. I’m not sure if it was the writing or the fact I rarely read hard-cover books, but tend to listen to audio books while multi-tasking. Reading hard-cover means, for me, I’m reading while volunteering… likely in the semi-dark (just a reading light) and numerous distractions.
But I find myself thinking repeatedly of phrases, and have already picked up the book again to re-read a passage.
Rorschach on unsuspecting airplane seat. Pennyluck.”
After some thought, upgrading to five stars.
Admittedly, Part 1 was a slow read for me. I’m not sure if it was the writing or the fact I rarely read hard-cover books, but tend to listen to audio books while multi-tasking. Reading hard-cover means, for me, I’m reading while volunteering… likely in the semi-dark (just a reading light) and numerous distractions.
But I find myself thinking repeatedly of phrases, and have already picked up the book again to re-read a passage.
August 4, 2017
Some of these poems were gorgeous, and made me stop and reread them immediately. But others remained inaccessible to me--the images, ideas, and parts didn't always work together to offer me more as a reader.
January 14, 2025
Abstract, genuine, and prophetic, Alyan pieces together fragments of herself to construct her mosaic- an unapologetic and self-empathetic storyline of how she came to be such a miraculous artist.
February 27, 2025
Enjoyed her debut poetry collection. 🫶
Read
September 29, 2025from "Desert": "Each grief is an extravagance. / Each moon, a relief."
January 14, 2024
Hala Alyan's first book of literature reveals a young poet who has a wide vision for the images and themes at her disposal to explore female sexuality, family, place, and politics. The poems that depict female embodiment in various forms - consummation, virginity, pregnancy, maternity - are especially powerful. It's a moving volume of poetry from a powerful new literary voice.
September 30, 2014
A gorgeous, sumptuous voice that will transport you to the heart's deepest chambers. This is poetry sensual, devotional and awake to the mysteries of the world.
September 30, 2014
WOW! Read It, Read It Read It!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews