Shadow Price: Poems

by Farah Ghafoor

Shadow Price is an urgent exploration of what it means to live and write as a young, visible Muslim woman in an era of climate crisis as her generation’s future collapses around her. Traversing time, space, and body with imagery both surreal and documentary, Farah Ghafoor’s debut collection interrogates personal complicity, generational rifts, and our shocking collective disregard for the environment that sustains us and every other living thing. Borrowing its title from a finance term—“the estimated price of a good or service for which no market price exists,”—Shadow Price explores mortality, climate panic, and the violence of living in a capitalist society. What gives a living thing value? What is value? How do we serve existing power structures that determine the answers to those questions? Mourning the loss of the world’s creatures from insects to mammoths, Ghafoor’s poems also examine the urban dynamics between species with empathy and concern. Filled with both grief and hope, Ghafoor’s arresting poems take aim at shifting opinion on the urgency of climate change, pushing readers to look doom in the eye, without flinching and while moving towards political change.

Genres: Poetry

126 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2025

Reviews

[Jillian B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this collection of poems is poignant and powerful. The author uses poetic, sometimes absurdist, imagery to drive home her points about the devastation of unchecked capitalism and climate change, and this technique is very effective.

If you’re looking to get into reading poetry, and you are a person who cares about the world and the impact we have on it, this collection is a great place to start.

[Sarah Hilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If you burn a book, you burn yourself endlessly, cauterize time itself.”

No one’s doing it like Farah 😭😭😭😭😭

[alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You can still see it, over there, over the burning hill of industry, where we expect the clashes of rain, of flame, of stone.”

Farah offers a keen, grounded voice that jarred me right into confronting the implications and shifting dooms of climate change and colonialism. Her ability to take economic based concepts and explain it with clarity, while balancing the language with poetic flow is a wonderment.

What struck me most was the way in which the imagery of nature, often associated with beauty,
is bloodied in an absurd, wildly effective manner.

It is not the easiest text to enter, but the work and close reading required (as for most poetry) is well worth it.

[Jesse June-Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional collection of poems that navigate climate consciousness through time and space, providing thought provoking words through a clinical, playful, and deeply human voice that cannot be ignored.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely stunning poetry collection that faces the climate crisis head on.

[Hafsa | حفصہ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Day 1 of the #SealeyChallenge 2025

[Debs]

3.5 stars

[Hasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent