Heft

by Doyali Islam

From award-winning Toronto-based poet Doyali Islam comes a second collection of poems that investigates rupture and resilience.

How does one inhabit a world in which the moon and the drone hang in the same sky? How can one be at home in one's own body in the presence of suspected autoimmune illness, chronic/recurrent pain, and a society that bears down with a particular construct of normal female sexual experience? What might a daughter salvage within a fraught relationship with a cancer-stricken father? Uncannily at ease with both high lyricism and formal innovation and invention, these poems are unafraid to lift up and investigate burdens and ruptures of all kinds—psychic, social, cultural, physical, and political.

Providing continuity over the poet's visually-arresting forms—including Islam's self-termed split sonnets, double sonnets, and parallel poems—is allied remembrance of the resilience of the Palestinian people. Yet, the work doesn't always stray far from home, with a quintet of astro-poems that weave together myth and memory.

Here is a poet small in stature, unwilling to abandon to silence small histories, small life forms, and the small courages and beauties of the ordinary hour. In these rigorous, intimate, and luminous poems, the spirit of the everyday and the spirit of witness bind fiercely to one another. heft is a ledger of tenderness, survival, and risk.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

96 pages, ebook

First published March 26, 2019

Reviews

[Leah Horlick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm thrilled by what Islam is doing with structure and form in this collection, and her writing on Palestine, diasporic communities, and interrelated global struggles for migrant justice is incredible in its micro and macro detail. My favourite piece is "the ant," which is wonderful on and off the page; I heard her read it at Massy Books in Vancouver and was just stunned.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Split sonnets a revelation. Islam braids together narrators and subjects from different walks of life, bringing them alive on the page, bringing forth her body and her upset and her muscles and skin and being like an offering. Vulnerable and real and visceral.

[Sonali Dabade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doyali Islam was kind enough to send me her poetry collection a while ago, and in July, I had this urge to read this book. And how glad am I to have picked it up! The poems in here have a different format and though I wasn’t a fan of the parallel poetry – a matter of taste and understanding, really – the others were such powerful punches to the gut that I had to sit back, take a deep breath, go over the words in my mind again as I stared at the wall across from me, and then go back to the book. Loved this collection and I know that once I go back to India, I will revisit it again.

(Taken from my July 2022 wrap up on my blog: July 2022 Wrap Up)

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably my favorite of the poetry collections I've read so far this year! I thought the book design was incredible, and I've never truly seen anything like it. The poems were so well connected I thought, and I appreciated the notes at the end that called out what inspired the poem, or if it included lines from other poems or even documentaries. heft was a clever title, because it very accurately describes exactly what the collection feels like. I wrote down many lines because they were so moving and poignant and sharp.

[Susana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro qué no recomiendo si no acostumbras a leer poesía y sobre todo si no acostumbras a leer poesía en inglés. El libro es bellísimo, ingenioso y sincero pero también puede llegar a ser tedioso y cansado.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite Doyali Islam poems from heft

moving day
in johnstone strait
the ant
42nd parallel
41st parallel
daniel

[Sheila Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!