Scattered Arils

by Dena Rod

Scattered Arils, Dena Rod’s first full-length poetry collection, titled after the colloquial name for pomegranate seeds, excavates familial memory and ancestral inheritance.

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published May 17, 2021

About the author

Dena Rod is a non-binary poet whose work has been highlighted in My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, Butter Press, and Imagoes: A Queer Anthology. Their debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Milk and Cake Press May 2021. In 2020, Dena toured with Sister Spit, debuted the chapbook 'swallow a beginning', and joined The Rumpus‘s features team. A fellow of Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab, Dena writes to illuminate their experiences in the Iranian American diaspora and queer communities through creative nonfiction essays and poetry. Connect with Dena at denarod.com.

Reviews

[Tiffany L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked up this book and saw it’s epigraph from Audre Lorde, I knew that this book of poetry was exactly what I needed after a long week. Thank you, Rochelle, for sending me this collection! 🧡

Scattered Arils is a beautiful book written by Dena Rod, a queer Iranian American poet with a strong voice. There are recurring motifs of death, roots, anatomy, the body, tectonic plates, the stars, and other natural elements. More than anything, this book of poems unifies the body and the cosmos in ways that opened my eyes to the Iranian identity.

My favorite poems are “gravediggers of mosul,” “black and white” (this is the first poem that really stuck with me), and “center of it all” (this one gave me goosebumps).

The anatomical terms threw me in for a loop though and often I found myself getting distracted by these words. Maybe the purpose was that non-speakers wouldn’t understand it, like the untranslated Persian words, but it lost its effect on me at times. It did make me more curious about why the poet chose those words and if they tied in with the Iranian history.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn't even need the extra star for being the work of a bi poet, this chapbook was so good!

[Nassim · Rating 4 out of 5]

favorite poems: the gravediggers of mosul; remains; the lion's husband; black and white