Tablets: Secrets of the Clay

by Dunya Mikhail

A gorgeous fusion of poetry and image by “one of the foremost poets of our time” (The Christian Science Monitor).


“A bullet / then a siren / then ruins / then a bird song telling the truth”—Dunya Mikhail 


In her marvelous new poetry collection Secrets of the Clay, Dunya Mikhail transforms the world’s first symbols—Sumerian glyphs that were carved onto clay tablets—into the matter of our everyday contemporary life. Each of the ten sections in her book is composed of twenty-four short poems, and each poem combines both text and drawing. In her note to the collection, Mikhail writes, “I practiced at least two layers of translation in these the first from words in one language, Arabic, to another, English; and the second from words to images. What I received from my ancestors are offerings of the future rather than of the past. Now it’s my turn to offer them to you.”

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

Published September 3, 2024

About the author

Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi American poet and writer. She is the author of the poetry collections The War Works Hard, shortlisted for the International Griffon Poetry Prize, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (winner of the Arab American Book Award), The Iraqi Nights, winner of the Poetry Magazine Translation Award, and In Her Feminine Sign, chosen as one of the ten best poetry books of 2019 by The New York Public Library.

Her nonfiction book The Beekeeper was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her debut novel, The Bird Tattoo, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Mikhail is a laureate of the UNESCO Sharja Prize for Arab Culture and has received the UN Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing, as well as fellowships from the United States Artists, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation.

She currently teaches Arabic and poetry at Oakland University in Michigan.

Reviews

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to imagine that this welding of verse and image won’t be one of the premier books of 2024. The epigrammatic poems are occasionally too near cliche, but are more often sharp and strongly evocative. The images do an amazing job of bringing ancient Sumer I to the modern world: Mikhail’s simple, “primitive” illustrations truly make the styles of art more than 4000 years in the past a part of our lives today. Superb!

[Izy Carney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very cool process for writing these, translating them into three languages: Arabic, English, and symbolic pictures. Some were very poignant and some felt a little out of place. Beautiful little pictures - I love the way Arabic is incorporated into / create many of the images.

[Jack Malik · Rating 5 out of 5]

IF YOU’RE INTO RUPI KAUR, R.H. SIN, TUMBLR/INSTA POETS AND WOULD LIKE TO START READING MORE COMPLEX POETRY BUT STILL LIKE SHORT POEMS, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

One of my best read for 2025. The book consist of 240 short poems split into 10 chapters each (Tablets I - X).

Most of these poems are highly observatory, tender and vulnerable, almost resembling haiku-ness wisdom.

My favourite part of the book I’d say “Tablets V” and “Tablets IX” with the following poems:

Tablets V
1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.

Tablets IX
1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.

Also, if you love Etel Adnan’s “Time”, then this book is definitely for you.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mikhail tells us in an author's note that she is modeling these poems and drawings/etchings on the old (4000 BC) Sumerian clay tablets, originally done around Baghdad, where she is from. She seems to have a fluid process of composition here, moving from drawing to Arabic to English. The words written on the "tablets" are in Arabic, and the poems end up by necessity being mostly short. Reflecting her tradition (I think), the poems are more aphoristic than imagistic, although there are some remarkable images in here.

She has twelve collections of tablets, and they are loosely organized by theme or subject, whether that is love, grief, exile, family, poetry itself, etc. There are often small twists at the end of the poems that change everything. For instance, here's #22 from Tablet V:

It won't forget the faraway child,
that city whose door stayed open
for passersby, tourists, and invaders.

And sometimes the poems get the weight of myth. Here's #21 from Tablet VII:

The cage owner reminds the sparrow,
Life outside is an inferno.
One day the sparrow flies away
and there in the heights,
overlooking the ruins of the world,
the sparrow discovers the cage owner was right.
It sings about the ruins--
a beautiful song without walls.

And then the illustration is an etching of a classical head, with a bird perched above the black plane of the etching, and the Arabic text had written to the right.

So sometimes the poems have an intentionally archaic feel to them, and then sometimes they range across all boundaries of time and space, from Iraq to Detroit, from tablet to computer. I realize that the two I've quoted aren't even close to my favorite examples! I really don't know another book quite like this. Highly recommended.

[Minam · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was a bit insane 🥲

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Earth is so simple
you can explain it with a tear or a laugh.
The Earth is so complicated-
you need a tear or a laugh
to explain it."

[Sbakerreviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just wow. Mikhail is a wordsmith, an inventive chef taking natural ingredients to create something truly memorable.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant little book of etchings and poetry. Brilliant mostly for the idea of etchings as an ancient writing form made modern in the form of a book.