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October
What do we carry from one year to the next? What remains after devastation, and what, despite everything, takes root again?
October in Lebanon is heavy with memory. The euphoria of the 2019 revolution feels far away, its anniversaries marked by crisis, war and the genocide in Gaza.
Across multiple Octobers, Nur Turkmani meditates on rupture, transformation and the quiet undoing and remaking of relationships during collective catastrophe. Part archive, part love letter, her debut poetry collection holds the ordinary and the extraordinary in the same breath, spanning balconies and border towns, fig trees and songs for friends, autumn light and the instinct to flee.
Formally spare and emotionally saturated, October refuses both numbness and spectacle. These poems ask what it means to survive the world and still long for it; and how we hold what’s disappearing, or changing too quickly to make sense of.
October in Lebanon is heavy with memory. The euphoria of the 2019 revolution feels far away, its anniversaries marked by crisis, war and the genocide in Gaza.
Across multiple Octobers, Nur Turkmani meditates on rupture, transformation and the quiet undoing and remaking of relationships during collective catastrophe. Part archive, part love letter, her debut poetry collection holds the ordinary and the extraordinary in the same breath, spanning balconies and border towns, fig trees and songs for friends, autumn light and the instinct to flee.
Formally spare and emotionally saturated, October refuses both numbness and spectacle. These poems ask what it means to survive the world and still long for it; and how we hold what’s disappearing, or changing too quickly to make sense of.
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 18, 2026
nur turkmani, whose poetry i've been reading/following for around a year, has an excellent understanding of the economy of language. she does so much with so little. if i had to name contemporary analogues for her work, i would say madeleine cravens (deceptively simple, strategically economical, lots of confessional free-verse, lots of second person pronouns that feel intimate in spite of their universality) and hala alyan (place-forward poetry that's concerned with locating the speaker in a very precise political, social, and cultural moment, and that never loses its nostalgic warmth in that pursuit).
i enjoyed october more than cravens' pleasure principle and less than alyan's body of work (but specifically the moon that turns you back, which is so superb at specificity, montage/listing, and playing with form). unlike many poets who i find to be unnecessarily long-winded (using so much real estate to say so little of import!), i often wish turkmani gave us more in her poems.
in this collection, the larger, more sweeping poems are definitely among her strongest and most memorable, while the shorter, condensed offerings ("Autumn," "Garden," or "May 9, 2022," for example), for me, ran the risk of being cliché, conventional, and/or indistinguishable from the general poetic output of the contemporary canon (insofar as we understand a "contemporary anglophone canon").
as an example, in "[...]", we see a syntactical formula that's been done to death in contemporary poetry: "What is grief but a name? / Who is travel but a woman saying: / Take your shoes off, / sit. I am listening.”
the formula is, of course, "what is [BLANK] but [BLANK]?" followed by a kind of declarative answer extending an image and/or metaphor. a fun figurative equation that helps us link two or more seemingly disparate or unlikely ideas. in turkmani's hand, the formula is still pretty, don't get me wrong, but it also rings hollow because i've seen it used so often.
the best of the best here is also the most specific and the most long-winded. in "To All the Flatmates of Hamra," which names a real street in beirut and summons the kind of specificity i crave in poetry:
so good! there's still a sense of universal tenderness and longing here, but it's buoyed by the knowledge that turkmani is conjuring a real street, a real time, real people she lived with, and all the memories, travels, and fears shared by this group! long and trailing, with lists, with anecdotes, and the above is just a snatch from the full thing!
this is why i liken turkmani to alyan. because, at her best, turkmani does for me what i've come to expect of alyan. this excerpt is from "Relapse Dream Ending with My Grandmother's Hands" from the previously named the moon that turns you back collection, which i swear by:
the through-line, for me, is place as a vehicle for emotive force. place humanizes the speaker and her loved ones. place colors her language and her tastes. place is also time and religion and family and politics. also and importantly: dreams in poetry can be so difficult to do well, because dreams are overdone everywhere and all but the dreamer themself (more often than not) finds discussion of dreams trite/uninteresting/boring, but hala alyan ties dreams back to real events and those real events are rooted in specificity. that's why it's so excellent!
other standouts from october: "Hamra," "Recovering Talkalakh," "Glass for Breakfast (Revisited)" (which is a poem that remixes lines from poems that have preceded it, so good, so incisive, so poignant), "On the Bus from Beirut to Tripoli,” "Years Ago," "Animal Grief" (might be my favorite from this collection). i loved the playlist at the beginning of this and think more collections need to do that (it makes so much sense to join music and poetry! less so music and fiction because idgaf if your fmc listens to taylor swift in a fictional world where she's kissing her hockey player rival or whatever.....). i also loved the author's note that situated this collection politically.
in conclusion, i am a long-time fan of turkmani and will be following her into whatever comes next!
i enjoyed october more than cravens' pleasure principle and less than alyan's body of work (but specifically the moon that turns you back, which is so superb at specificity, montage/listing, and playing with form). unlike many poets who i find to be unnecessarily long-winded (using so much real estate to say so little of import!), i often wish turkmani gave us more in her poems.
in this collection, the larger, more sweeping poems are definitely among her strongest and most memorable, while the shorter, condensed offerings ("Autumn," "Garden," or "May 9, 2022," for example), for me, ran the risk of being cliché, conventional, and/or indistinguishable from the general poetic output of the contemporary canon (insofar as we understand a "contemporary anglophone canon").
as an example, in "[...]", we see a syntactical formula that's been done to death in contemporary poetry: "What is grief but a name? / Who is travel but a woman saying: / Take your shoes off, / sit. I am listening.”
the formula is, of course, "what is [BLANK] but [BLANK]?" followed by a kind of declarative answer extending an image and/or metaphor. a fun figurative equation that helps us link two or more seemingly disparate or unlikely ideas. in turkmani's hand, the formula is still pretty, don't get me wrong, but it also rings hollow because i've seen it used so often.
the best of the best here is also the most specific and the most long-winded. in "To All the Flatmates of Hamra," which names a real street in beirut and summons the kind of specificity i crave in poetry:
One more round, then we’d go back to work, / one more round to push sleep further and further off, / to roll the last cigarette of the year, again, / to share the musty blankets and discuss yesterday’s dream: / the sea, the tunnel, the bone. / To remind each other of the real reason our hair thinned, / why we sucked our thumbs, binged, arrived early— / the real reason we left Amman, / we left Damascus, London, Baghdad, New York, Abu Dhabi, / why we called too late, why we opened the door, / and look, look: we’ve found the ring for you, / there, in the sofa arms. / This corner where the lost things went to hide.
so good! there's still a sense of universal tenderness and longing here, but it's buoyed by the knowledge that turkmani is conjuring a real street, a real time, real people she lived with, and all the memories, travels, and fears shared by this group! long and trailing, with lists, with anecdotes, and the above is just a snatch from the full thing!
this is why i liken turkmani to alyan. because, at her best, turkmani does for me what i've come to expect of alyan. this excerpt is from "Relapse Dream Ending with My Grandmother's Hands" from the previously named the moon that turns you back collection, which i swear by:
I announce myself in the opera house: rosary beads and du'as. / There are two arrows and I bury the second in my thigh. / There are two houses and I'm always like this when he leaves. / All I know of winter is I cusp West when it starts, / start talking Texas again, googling casitas with blooms / of cacti at the door. I don't know if I'd call what I do love, / this raking of hot coals, like how I cried during the ectopic / and said, We just bought this house, I wanted to be happy in it, / and you looked at me strange and said, A good house / can carry anguish, and this is how I think of bodies now too. / It is July in the dream, and I buy crystals from a bodega / and they open into liquor bottles, mezcal made in Oaxaca, / my tongue waking.
the through-line, for me, is place as a vehicle for emotive force. place humanizes the speaker and her loved ones. place colors her language and her tastes. place is also time and religion and family and politics. also and importantly: dreams in poetry can be so difficult to do well, because dreams are overdone everywhere and all but the dreamer themself (more often than not) finds discussion of dreams trite/uninteresting/boring, but hala alyan ties dreams back to real events and those real events are rooted in specificity. that's why it's so excellent!
other standouts from october: "Hamra," "Recovering Talkalakh," "Glass for Breakfast (Revisited)" (which is a poem that remixes lines from poems that have preceded it, so good, so incisive, so poignant), "On the Bus from Beirut to Tripoli,” "Years Ago," "Animal Grief" (might be my favorite from this collection). i loved the playlist at the beginning of this and think more collections need to do that (it makes so much sense to join music and poetry! less so music and fiction because idgaf if your fmc listens to taylor swift in a fictional world where she's kissing her hockey player rival or whatever.....). i also loved the author's note that situated this collection politically.
in conclusion, i am a long-time fan of turkmani and will be following her into whatever comes next!
September 27, 2026
I really didn’t want this collection to end. I savoured each poem across many mornings, afternoons, and evenings.
It was such a moving and tender portal to Beirut and all the complexity, grief, beauty, aches she holds.
It was such a moving and tender portal to Beirut and all the complexity, grief, beauty, aches she holds.
May 14, 2026
Read the whole collection in one day, couldn’t put it down. Tender, devastating, unforgettable.
April 2, 2026
‘Yes, the same thoughts still seize me like a cough.
For instance, how everyone I love is so real
For instance, that dream you had in February.
The one where our cities line up like coffins. The eye-shaped clouds.
The trees. That last shot of arak before we left.
And most of all: How we have no say. Our history still isn’t ours.’
If there’s one poetry book you’ll read this year, make it this one.
For instance, how everyone I love is so real
For instance, that dream you had in February.
The one where our cities line up like coffins. The eye-shaped clouds.
The trees. That last shot of arak before we left.
And most of all: How we have no say. Our history still isn’t ours.’
If there’s one poetry book you’ll read this year, make it this one.
May 14, 2026
This poetry collection speaks to the poet’s extraordinary capacity to love. Nur’s gift to us is joy, beauty, and devastating tenderness in both ordinary moments and the toughest of times. A stunning debut that is so awake, so alive, line after line.
October 19, 2026
Sat down and read this in a book shop in one sitting. Really beautiful and moving to read, but tragic and sad at the same time knowing it’s all so real.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews