Swallow

by Fida Islaih

With the pandemic and isolation it made room for self reflection. These poems helped me with accepting my pain and healing from it. It’s about seeing my identity and finding self love in the midst of trying to belong in a community, living in a pandemic and other injustices. It shares the journey of doing the work to unpack repressed emotions, memories, and properly processing them. It’s about learning and growing through the connections and revelations made. Through it all, I remove my negative self judgement, find my self worth and confidence.

Trigger warning: anxiety, trauma, religion, injustice.

Unknown Binding

Published June 25, 2021

About the author

Fida Islaih is a self published poet and freelance poetry editor. Islaih writes about mental health and cultural experiences. She helps other poets polish their poetry books for self publishing. Aside from her work, she enjoys calligraphy and jigsaw puzzles.

Reviews

[Anna Long · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this available on scribd, so if you have a membership with them & want to read it, it’s there.

I feel pretty conflicted about this book. I really loved the message behind the content. The author is speaking on their personal experiences with questioning their religion, experiencing discrimination, and other hard topics. The execution is what is preventing this rating from being higher. Free verse poems often run the risk of being too close to prose. I think all free verse poets (myself included here) have produced a poem or two that feels just like short prose. For me, a lot of the poetry (especially towards the front of the book) felt too close to prose, and like they would be better suited as short, personal essays.