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The Threshold: Poems
A selection of luminous, fiercely intelligent verse from Egypt’s premier poet.
Iman Mersal is Egypt’s―indeed, the Arab world’s―great outsider poet. Over the past three decades, she has crafted a voice that is ferocious and tender, street-smart and vulnerable. Her early work captures the energies of Cairo’s legendary literary bohème , a home for “Lovers of cheap weed and awkward confessions / Anti-State agitators” and “People like me.” These are poems of wit and rage, freaked by moments of sudden beauty, like “the smell of guava” mysteriously wafting through the City of the Dead. Other poems bear witness to agonizing loss and erotic temptation, “the breath of two bodies that never had enough time / and so took pleasure in their mounting terror.” Mersal’s most recent work illuminates the trials of displacement and migration, as well as the risks of crossing boundaries, personal and political, in literature and in life.
The Threshold gathers poems from Mersal’s first four collections of A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons (1995), Walking as Long as Possible (1997), Alternative Geography (2006), and Until I Give Up the Idea of Home (2013). Taken together, these works chart a poetic itinerary from defiance and antagonism to the establishment of a new, self-created sensibility. At their center is the indefatigably intelligent, funny, flawed, and impossible to pin down. As she writes, “I’m pretty sure / my self-exposures / are for me to hide behind.”
Iman Mersal is Egypt’s―indeed, the Arab world’s―great outsider poet. Over the past three decades, she has crafted a voice that is ferocious and tender, street-smart and vulnerable. Her early work captures the energies of Cairo’s legendary literary bohème , a home for “Lovers of cheap weed and awkward confessions / Anti-State agitators” and “People like me.” These are poems of wit and rage, freaked by moments of sudden beauty, like “the smell of guava” mysteriously wafting through the City of the Dead. Other poems bear witness to agonizing loss and erotic temptation, “the breath of two bodies that never had enough time / and so took pleasure in their mounting terror.” Mersal’s most recent work illuminates the trials of displacement and migration, as well as the risks of crossing boundaries, personal and political, in literature and in life.
The Threshold gathers poems from Mersal’s first four collections of A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons (1995), Walking as Long as Possible (1997), Alternative Geography (2006), and Until I Give Up the Idea of Home (2013). Taken together, these works chart a poetic itinerary from defiance and antagonism to the establishment of a new, self-created sensibility. At their center is the indefatigably intelligent, funny, flawed, and impossible to pin down. As she writes, “I’m pretty sure / my self-exposures / are for me to hide behind.”
128 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2022
7 people are currently reading
228 people want to read
About the author
Iman Mersal
24 books93 followersIman Mersal is the author of four books of poems in Arabic: Ittisafat (Characterisations), 1990; Mamarr Mu‘tim Yasluh li Ta‘allum al-Raqs (A Dark Alley Suitable for Dance Lessons), 1995; al-Mashy Atwal Waqt Mumkin (Walking As Long As Possible), 1997; and Jughrafia Badila (Alternative Geography), 2006.
Mersal was born in 1966 in Mansoura, Egypt. She was an editor for the cultural and literary reviews Bint al-Ard and Adab wa Naqd in Egypt for several years before leaving for North America.
Mersal relocated to Boston, Massachussetts, USA in 1998 and from there to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she now resides with her husband, the ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf, and their two sons. She works as assistant professor of Arabic literature at the University of Alberta. In 2005, she was the subject of Shabnam Sukhdev's Stranger in her Own Skin, a documentary film based on Mersal's poetry. Her current academic interests focus on questions of diasporic identities, which were central to her recently completed PhD thesis with Cairo University, The Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature.
Selected poems from Mersal’s ouevre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. These Are Not Oranges, My Love, a selection of Mersal's work translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow, New York in 2008.
Mersal was born in 1966 in Mansoura, Egypt. She was an editor for the cultural and literary reviews Bint al-Ard and Adab wa Naqd in Egypt for several years before leaving for North America.
Mersal relocated to Boston, Massachussetts, USA in 1998 and from there to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada where she now resides with her husband, the ethnomusicologist Michael Frishkopf, and their two sons. She works as assistant professor of Arabic literature at the University of Alberta. In 2005, she was the subject of Shabnam Sukhdev's Stranger in her Own Skin, a documentary film based on Mersal's poetry. Her current academic interests focus on questions of diasporic identities, which were central to her recently completed PhD thesis with Cairo University, The Images of America in Arabic Travel Literature.
Selected poems from Mersal’s ouevre have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian. These Are Not Oranges, My Love, a selection of Mersal's work translated into English by Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow, New York in 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 14, 2023
when there is a constant rage simmering in your heart, what do you do with the embers?
I case of Iman Mersal, its a verbal river that carves its territories in deep jungles and boisterous mountains. Iman writes her words into tangible things, abstract ideas to vivid imagery, and meditates her way into and out of complex issues. She forgoes the rhythm for a leap - in axiomatic sense, and its stellar to watch her do it so flawlessly and effortlessly in this short poem "Wailing".
Not gonna lie, when I read "Description of a migraine" , I felt myself nodding at this dose of truth serum. She goes as far as to say -
which are, you know, facts. This one stood out for it tells an entire experience in a story like fashion - how migraine hits, the initial feeling and the way it morphs into splitting headache (the section above) and how it ends - "of arousing sore spots simply by remembering them". Like migraines, painful memories work the same - traumatic memories hit like a migraine attack, taking out ability to do anything but to indulge that pain for a span of time till it ebbs away; hiding, waiting.
"The truth is of interest to no one but children and the insane." She writes in a prose about men and women hitting forty. Its a universal experience and she bursts the bubble of people claiming to getting closer to truth. Its an interesting note.
The translator notes that "Map Store" is Iman's way of dissecting a perception of post 9/11 world. And its both true and not as this part of geography has been in constant conflicts with people being constantly displaced and making move to the west. In this poem, the politics of the world comes in desensitization of war, the commercialization of the stories that happen during war and feeling part of a combustive world even when one lived in a distant isolated village.
The one that made me contemplate the most is perhaps - "Evil". An uneven nine lined short poem makes quite a bold statement and thus so with a leap in logic.
It both touched me and hurt me in the same breath.
Iman's poetry is grounded, surreal in everyday sense and consumes the wasted days. Absolutely lovely.
I case of Iman Mersal, its a verbal river that carves its territories in deep jungles and boisterous mountains. Iman writes her words into tangible things, abstract ideas to vivid imagery, and meditates her way into and out of complex issues. She forgoes the rhythm for a leap - in axiomatic sense, and its stellar to watch her do it so flawlessly and effortlessly in this short poem "Wailing".
Wordless women
line the hallways leading to your bed,
ritually preparing themselves
to scrape the accumulated rust from throats
that never make a sound
except when they wail together.
Not gonna lie, when I read "Description of a migraine" , I felt myself nodding at this dose of truth serum. She goes as far as to say -
"I intended to begin
My two hands aren’t enough to prop my head up
but wrote instead:
A bullet from an unseen gun rips into
peaceful dimness
complete disorientation
fracture"
which are, you know, facts. This one stood out for it tells an entire experience in a story like fashion - how migraine hits, the initial feeling and the way it morphs into splitting headache (the section above) and how it ends - "of arousing sore spots simply by remembering them". Like migraines, painful memories work the same - traumatic memories hit like a migraine attack, taking out ability to do anything but to indulge that pain for a span of time till it ebbs away; hiding, waiting.
"The truth is of interest to no one but children and the insane." She writes in a prose about men and women hitting forty. Its a universal experience and she bursts the bubble of people claiming to getting closer to truth. Its an interesting note.
The translator notes that "Map Store" is Iman's way of dissecting a perception of post 9/11 world. And its both true and not as this part of geography has been in constant conflicts with people being constantly displaced and making move to the west. In this poem, the politics of the world comes in desensitization of war, the commercialization of the stories that happen during war and feeling part of a combustive world even when one lived in a distant isolated village.
The one that made me contemplate the most is perhaps - "Evil". An uneven nine lined short poem makes quite a bold statement and thus so with a leap in logic.
"But lately I’ve begun to doubt the existence of evil altogether
as if all the hurt in the world happens
at the moment we make sure
that the creatures we’ve made to bleed are real. "
It both touched me and hurt me in the same breath.
Iman's poetry is grounded, surreal in everyday sense and consumes the wasted days. Absolutely lovely.
June 2, 2023
First an Explanation
I am emotionally drained. Which leaves one feeling melodramatic enough to make such a bold Statement.
Spring cleaning getting rid of old furniture I grew up with and getting rid of stuff is like throwing away your past and memories which is dramatic to someone who isn’t Used to or all that comfortable with change.
It’s Rather dramatic and sets someone already used to a somewhat nostalgic outlook into reality which seems even more darker when their safe haven has been altered truly revealing nothing can ever stay the same.
Even if given proper time To prepare which was certainly not the Case here there would have been time enough to prepare for the trauma
Or brace myself. Even though it didn’t Really hit until Right before and after.
It also feels like work because you might not have the choice of when it will happen but have it forced upon you. So you have no real control.
Even though you are an adult and suposedly in control Of your choices
Feeling A Little more sensitive and a Little More
Prone to outbursts or displays of extremity at least for me. Which might be minor or subversive for others, of which maybe this is actual Writing is. So of course was inspired by this book or collection. As it made it Easy to Not only identify but also help Me through my emotions.
Which leads to this book THE THRESHOLD by Iman Mersal.
It’s a book I would normally enjoy either way, but reading it in this mindset or condition made it personal. The craft, perspective and emotion on display is a gritty beautiful presentation full
Of truth. Though for some it might just be well
Written details of actions, Perceptions and comparisons
The funny thing is This truly came out of nowhere. Was inspired to check out more poetry by this writer after seeing the poem MORNING BELL on a subway poster as part of New York City Transit’s Poetry in motion series. This was some kind of gateway drug. As it lead me On a quest to find more of her work and riding the wave. As it was a poet I found on my Own. No suggestions, recommendations or having to be seduced by reading volumes of her work before finally Getting into her groove.
It’s like falling in love and not needing a hook-up, Dating service or any other gimmick that seems to be needed these days. Where we have the information and means to make connections but that has driven us far apart with too much information that creates doubt and fear or a constant feeling of superiority and closed mindedness instead of being open and taking chances.
She is from a different culture but find we speak the same language. The text is translated but speaks to all of us in some ways,
Loud and clear. Fascinating as a dip into a different culture. Yet finding The ending of the sacred while still clutching onto tradition.
Reading her words makes one feel revitalized.
As it has been a minute since a poet and their writing had enraptured and excited me.
This collection Is definitely one for a reader.
As there are many literary references
That help set a mood, Mindset and tone
Our Cynical, sarcastic, jaded, Romantic heroine and guide. Who Can be dark and find reasons for it.
This collection works as a memoir that offers us an opportunity to identify with This storyteller as there are short essays, yet a narrative that comes across as a journal in pieces of a certain times in life. Where it feels Like each line offers an intensity of it’s Own. It’s like a hit album where there is beet few you would skip over. So each time you come back to it. You read or listen to throughout and thoroughly. Like personal prayers that can only come From the Personal
In the end hopefully it leads to Consider your own life, Memories and not only put them in perspective but also inspire and study life and others around you.
It makes you Look for the beauty in the darkness or appreciate the darkness for what it might bring forth and find particular acceptance, but find treasures that might help you Through it. To be that Light that was once lost or relight that Torch to help you keep moving forward, no matter what
Highly Recommended, this is a book I would give out as gifts to others for them To discover.
I am emotionally drained. Which leaves one feeling melodramatic enough to make such a bold Statement.
Spring cleaning getting rid of old furniture I grew up with and getting rid of stuff is like throwing away your past and memories which is dramatic to someone who isn’t Used to or all that comfortable with change.
It’s Rather dramatic and sets someone already used to a somewhat nostalgic outlook into reality which seems even more darker when their safe haven has been altered truly revealing nothing can ever stay the same.
Even if given proper time To prepare which was certainly not the Case here there would have been time enough to prepare for the trauma
Or brace myself. Even though it didn’t Really hit until Right before and after.
It also feels like work because you might not have the choice of when it will happen but have it forced upon you. So you have no real control.
Even though you are an adult and suposedly in control Of your choices
Feeling A Little more sensitive and a Little More
Prone to outbursts or displays of extremity at least for me. Which might be minor or subversive for others, of which maybe this is actual Writing is. So of course was inspired by this book or collection. As it made it Easy to Not only identify but also help Me through my emotions.
Which leads to this book THE THRESHOLD by Iman Mersal.
It’s a book I would normally enjoy either way, but reading it in this mindset or condition made it personal. The craft, perspective and emotion on display is a gritty beautiful presentation full
Of truth. Though for some it might just be well
Written details of actions, Perceptions and comparisons
The funny thing is This truly came out of nowhere. Was inspired to check out more poetry by this writer after seeing the poem MORNING BELL on a subway poster as part of New York City Transit’s Poetry in motion series. This was some kind of gateway drug. As it lead me On a quest to find more of her work and riding the wave. As it was a poet I found on my Own. No suggestions, recommendations or having to be seduced by reading volumes of her work before finally Getting into her groove.
It’s like falling in love and not needing a hook-up, Dating service or any other gimmick that seems to be needed these days. Where we have the information and means to make connections but that has driven us far apart with too much information that creates doubt and fear or a constant feeling of superiority and closed mindedness instead of being open and taking chances.
She is from a different culture but find we speak the same language. The text is translated but speaks to all of us in some ways,
Loud and clear. Fascinating as a dip into a different culture. Yet finding The ending of the sacred while still clutching onto tradition.
Reading her words makes one feel revitalized.
As it has been a minute since a poet and their writing had enraptured and excited me.
This collection Is definitely one for a reader.
As there are many literary references
That help set a mood, Mindset and tone
Our Cynical, sarcastic, jaded, Romantic heroine and guide. Who Can be dark and find reasons for it.
This collection works as a memoir that offers us an opportunity to identify with This storyteller as there are short essays, yet a narrative that comes across as a journal in pieces of a certain times in life. Where it feels Like each line offers an intensity of it’s Own. It’s like a hit album where there is beet few you would skip over. So each time you come back to it. You read or listen to throughout and thoroughly. Like personal prayers that can only come From the Personal
In the end hopefully it leads to Consider your own life, Memories and not only put them in perspective but also inspire and study life and others around you.
It makes you Look for the beauty in the darkness or appreciate the darkness for what it might bring forth and find particular acceptance, but find treasures that might help you Through it. To be that Light that was once lost or relight that Torch to help you keep moving forward, no matter what
Highly Recommended, this is a book I would give out as gifts to others for them To discover.
Read
August 25, 2023i picked up this collection because i read mersal's poem "the idea of houses" in a separate anthology and it really, really resonated with me.
and i admit that maybe i went into this with unfairly high expectations, because i had already seen what i ended up finding the best of the collection, but nothing else quite came close. there were still a handful of quite good poems--CV, amina, the curse of small creatures--but i frankly felt a little disappointed reading this.
i've decided not to give this a numerical rating because of how personal this collection is. i'm grateful to mersal for writing a poem that i related to on a word-for-word level at the time i read it, and it's not fair for me to expect the same from an entire collection. i could see myself coming back to this in the future--maybe by then, i'll find something else that hits.
another kinda funny coincidence: i read the anthology with a friend, and a couple weeks before starting it we went to nyc together. we saw a poem on the train about coffee, thought it was not very good, and forgot about it. until i looked up this collection on goodreads and realized it was by mersal. anyway, small world
and i admit that maybe i went into this with unfairly high expectations, because i had already seen what i ended up finding the best of the collection, but nothing else quite came close. there were still a handful of quite good poems--CV, amina, the curse of small creatures--but i frankly felt a little disappointed reading this.
i've decided not to give this a numerical rating because of how personal this collection is. i'm grateful to mersal for writing a poem that i related to on a word-for-word level at the time i read it, and it's not fair for me to expect the same from an entire collection. i could see myself coming back to this in the future--maybe by then, i'll find something else that hits.
another kinda funny coincidence: i read the anthology with a friend, and a couple weeks before starting it we went to nyc together. we saw a poem on the train about coffee, thought it was not very good, and forgot about it. until i looked up this collection on goodreads and realized it was by mersal. anyway, small world
December 8, 2025
With the usual caveat that I don't know how to review poetry beyond "this is how it made me feel"... There were some poems that I liked, but also something a little abrasive about the writing style that left me feeling a little disconnected. I kept waiting for the poems to stir something specific, but instead it seemed to push me away. Then again, it left me curious about Mersal's writing overall and not opposed to reading more of it, so it gets an extra point for that.
June 28, 2023
Exceptional. The craft, translation, perspective, education, emotion. What a gift to have read these. I need a copy of this book that doesn't belong to the library.
Quotes (unformatted)
to discover the open window in your laugh (3)
I'm pretty sure
my self-exposures
are for me to hide behind. (3)
We walk toward disaster with our eyes open
and no hesitation. (37)
It's like rubbing rust off the word love (45)
playing a game of peekaboo with everyone I want to be with (86)
I'm waiting like someone who doesn't know what awaits her.
No, I'm waiting like someone who will live to tell of it,
someone free and trembling between fort and sea (95)
For me, the closest place at a safe distance from this desolation is death. (97)
Dawn is when the heart gets pulled in two directions. The sun hasn't yet opened her eyes, and the moon hasn't yet gone to bed... (99)
I'm not frightened of the sea
for the closed book of desire
is open
with a bookmark on one of its pages. (101)
Let home be that place where you never notice the bad lighting, let it be a wall whose cracks keep growing until one day you take them for doors. (104)
Quotes (unformatted)
to discover the open window in your laugh (3)
I'm pretty sure
my self-exposures
are for me to hide behind. (3)
We walk toward disaster with our eyes open
and no hesitation. (37)
It's like rubbing rust off the word love (45)
playing a game of peekaboo with everyone I want to be with (86)
I'm waiting like someone who doesn't know what awaits her.
No, I'm waiting like someone who will live to tell of it,
someone free and trembling between fort and sea (95)
For me, the closest place at a safe distance from this desolation is death. (97)
Dawn is when the heart gets pulled in two directions. The sun hasn't yet opened her eyes, and the moon hasn't yet gone to bed... (99)
I'm not frightened of the sea
for the closed book of desire
is open
with a bookmark on one of its pages. (101)
Let home be that place where you never notice the bad lighting, let it be a wall whose cracks keep growing until one day you take them for doors. (104)
January 30, 2023
I’m a fair-minded person.
I’ll give you more than half the air in the room
so long as you see me for what I am.
(from “Amina”)
I should tell my father
the only man who shattered me
with desire looked just like him.
I should tell my friends
how many photos I have of myself,
each representing the real me,
which I’ll send to them one by one.
I should tell my lover,
Be grateful for my infidelities.
Without them I wouldn’t
have stuck around long enough
to discover the open window in your laugh.
(from “Self-exposure”)
What you’ve learned here is no different from what you learned there:
—read for your passport away from reality
—hide anxiety with vulgar language
—banish weakness by growing your nails
—cure insomnia by smoking always and tidying your drawers sometimes
—use three different brands of eyedrops to clear your vision, then enjoy your blindness (even better is the moment when your eyelids close over the burn)
Here as well as there
life seems to exist only to be watched from afar.
(from “Why did she come?”)
I’ll give you more than half the air in the room
so long as you see me for what I am.
(from “Amina”)
I should tell my father
the only man who shattered me
with desire looked just like him.
I should tell my friends
how many photos I have of myself,
each representing the real me,
which I’ll send to them one by one.
I should tell my lover,
Be grateful for my infidelities.
Without them I wouldn’t
have stuck around long enough
to discover the open window in your laugh.
(from “Self-exposure”)
What you’ve learned here is no different from what you learned there:
—read for your passport away from reality
—hide anxiety with vulgar language
—banish weakness by growing your nails
—cure insomnia by smoking always and tidying your drawers sometimes
—use three different brands of eyedrops to clear your vision, then enjoy your blindness (even better is the moment when your eyelids close over the burn)
Here as well as there
life seems to exist only to be watched from afar.
(from “Why did she come?”)
April 8, 2023
An extraordinary collection tracing the poet’s life, history, daily intimacies, migrations, family, origins. Includes an informative and compelling introduction by the translator.
September 13, 2023
“I’m pretty sure / my self-exposures / are for me to hide behind,” Mersal muses in her poem “CV.” Oh, what an artful dodger! Translator Robyn Creswell’s Preface is full of insights, placing Mersal’s work in the long and distinguished history of Arabic poetry. Her nuanced translations capture the poet’s austere “formalist stringency” of style and “distinctive tone of voice” with its “singular and strangely mellifluous rasp” (p. xvii).
Favorite Poems:
“Self-Exposure”
“Those Worthy of My Friendship”
“It Seems I Inherit the Dead”
“The Threshold”
“They Tear Down My Family Home”
“Morning Bell”
“CV”
“A Life”
“Wise Counsel for Girls and Boys over Forty”
“Map Store”
“The Curse of Small Creatures”
“Up in the Air”
“The Employee”
“A Man Decides to Explain What Love is”
“An Essay on Children’s Games”
“Good Night”
“The Slave Trade”
“As If the World Were Missing a Blue Window”
“From the Window”
“The Idea of Home”
Favorite Poems:
“Self-Exposure”
“Those Worthy of My Friendship”
“It Seems I Inherit the Dead”
“The Threshold”
“They Tear Down My Family Home”
“Morning Bell”
“CV”
“A Life”
“Wise Counsel for Girls and Boys over Forty”
“Map Store”
“The Curse of Small Creatures”
“Up in the Air”
“The Employee”
“A Man Decides to Explain What Love is”
“An Essay on Children’s Games”
“Good Night”
“The Slave Trade”
“As If the World Were Missing a Blue Window”
“From the Window”
“The Idea of Home”
February 26, 2023
(This book was read for a MENA Heritage Month episode for The Review Slip Podcast).
I really enjoyed my time reading The Threshold. One of the things that I think is fun about Poetry Collections is you get to go in knowing there are going to be some pieces that don’t resonate with you, and that’s okay. I have to admit that this happened far less than I expected it to. While some of the longer, more free-style pieces which felt more like flash fiction than poetry (in my amateur opinion) were harder for me to get through, there were plenty of bangers to keep me happily engaged and reading more.
All in all this feels like an excellent collection for those getting their feet wet in the Poetry Game, and for those experts who are looking for something different and with a different POV and perspective that you might be used to.
I really enjoyed my time reading The Threshold. One of the things that I think is fun about Poetry Collections is you get to go in knowing there are going to be some pieces that don’t resonate with you, and that’s okay. I have to admit that this happened far less than I expected it to. While some of the longer, more free-style pieces which felt more like flash fiction than poetry (in my amateur opinion) were harder for me to get through, there were plenty of bangers to keep me happily engaged and reading more.
All in all this feels like an excellent collection for those getting their feet wet in the Poetry Game, and for those experts who are looking for something different and with a different POV and perspective that you might be used to.
October 26, 2023
"Mersal’s work explores uncomfortable questions of fatherland, family, fidelity, identity, and being a daughter, wife, mother, lover, and artist. In a voice both fluid and laser-focused, fierce and tenuous, unflinching and vulnerable, she hews a path that is post-Arab-modernist, unsettling certainties about the ground from which an individual sees and speaks. Mersal’s unsparing eye looks inward, as well as outward." -Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-e...
Read the full review here: https://books.substack.com/p/review-e...
May 11, 2025
“…My life, whose existence I've never been sure of, lies next to me on my bed, opening her eyes after a long slumber and stretching her limbs, like a princess who knows that her father's palace is magically protected against thieves, and that even if the wars never seem to end, happiness lies just beneath the skin. …”
The Threshold stands as a testament to Mersal’s prowess in articulating the intricacies of human experience, a compelling read for those interested in contemporary poetry that bridges cultures and explores the depths of personal and collective identity.
The Threshold stands as a testament to Mersal’s prowess in articulating the intricacies of human experience, a compelling read for those interested in contemporary poetry that bridges cultures and explores the depths of personal and collective identity.
November 29, 2023
I enjoyed this short volume’s prose poems for their mideastern and female perspective. Imam Mersal is Egyptian but now lives in Canada. Some of the poems seem autobiographical like “Why did she come,” which contains insights that only an outsider would have. With relatives still living in their country of origin, some immigrants fly back to visit. “Up in the Air” begins with one such returning traveler:
“With my head on your shoulder
the flight attendant must have thought we were honeymooners”
and ends with
“Don’t ask me where I am headed
just because you let me borrow your shoulder for five hours
Or because you refrained, for my sake, from getting up to go to the bathroom.
I might not actually have been asleep.”
“With my head on your shoulder
the flight attendant must have thought we were honeymooners”
and ends with
“Don’t ask me where I am headed
just because you let me borrow your shoulder for five hours
Or because you refrained, for my sake, from getting up to go to the bathroom.
I might not actually have been asleep.”
February 1, 2024
My first encounter with Iman Mersal, and now I want to read more! She writes such visceral, playful, mournful, and tender poems, that balance lyricism and simplicity perfectly. Each poem reads almost as a short story, the kind of story that leaves you wanting more. My favourites in the collection are "I have a musical name", "Some things escape me" and "Love". If it's this good in translation, I'm daydreaming about how beautiful the original must be.
December 4, 2024
Respect for Marx
In front of brightly lit windows
overflowing with lingerie
I can't stop myself
from thinking about Marx.
A respect for Karl Marx
is the one thing my lovers had in common.
I allowed all of them, though to differing extents,
to paw at the cotton dolls
hidden in my body.
Marx
Marx
I'll never forgive him. (33)
In front of brightly lit windows
overflowing with lingerie
I can't stop myself
from thinking about Marx.
A respect for Karl Marx
is the one thing my lovers had in common.
I allowed all of them, though to differing extents,
to paw at the cotton dolls
hidden in my body.
Marx
Marx
I'll never forgive him. (33)
March 3, 2023
ديوان كعناق الأحبة. طوبى لجيلنا بمثل هذه الشاعرة
April 12, 2023
Egypt's David McFadden. More of my hot takes here: https://youtu.be/L9EMVAWtINw
December 12, 2023
Amazing collection from a feminist from Egypt.
"I'll give you more than half the air in the room / so long as you see me for what I am."
"I'll give you more than half the air in the room / so long as you see me for what I am."
March 10, 2025
"But we won't lose anything
that's beyond our capacity for loss."
that's beyond our capacity for loss."
July 11, 2025
I enjoyed her perspective
February 22, 2023
After a re-read of “Oranges” in February 2023, I really appreciated the translations here. Certain words or phrases were much clearer and some awkwardness in translation was removed. There were just a few things that seemed better translated in “Oranges” (though I’m not qualified to say), and I wish some additional poems had been included here. At the same time, other poems were probably wisely excluded. Recommended.
August 16, 2023
“Time typically disappears as one walks over the threshold.”
🚪
We cross numerous thresholds in our lifetime—some personal while some driven by the social, and yet each crossing is a new lesson.
Sometimes we rejoice in the new journey, at times we lament the loss of innocence & many a times we're stuck with the remnants of the journey, reliving it through countless memories.
Iman Mersal's poems translated for the first time from Arabic & compiled in this collection "The Threshold" by Robyn Creswell, is an ode to the journey a traveller takes & the numerous thresholds they tread through.
Diving into the crevices of her life in Cairo, Mersal brings alive in her poetry the strains of personal relationships, the fierceness of revolutionary minds, the euphoria of younger days & the changing political sphere of Egypt.
While relishing the hustle & bustle of Cairo's streets and peeking into the lives & houses of the people, we're suddenly transported to an unknown territory to witness the journey of migration & the loss of home, language & culture.
Each poem in the collection while being distinct, comes together to weave a unifying story by the end and her nuanced writing tugs at your heartstrings.
I was in awe with her verses & the feminist and political undertones rendered in her poetry made it even more of a fascinating read.
If you're looking at exploring diverse literature & especially poetry that will invoke strong emotions, then you need to add this collection to your TBR.
🚪
We cross numerous thresholds in our lifetime—some personal while some driven by the social, and yet each crossing is a new lesson.
Sometimes we rejoice in the new journey, at times we lament the loss of innocence & many a times we're stuck with the remnants of the journey, reliving it through countless memories.
Iman Mersal's poems translated for the first time from Arabic & compiled in this collection "The Threshold" by Robyn Creswell, is an ode to the journey a traveller takes & the numerous thresholds they tread through.
Diving into the crevices of her life in Cairo, Mersal brings alive in her poetry the strains of personal relationships, the fierceness of revolutionary minds, the euphoria of younger days & the changing political sphere of Egypt.
While relishing the hustle & bustle of Cairo's streets and peeking into the lives & houses of the people, we're suddenly transported to an unknown territory to witness the journey of migration & the loss of home, language & culture.
Each poem in the collection while being distinct, comes together to weave a unifying story by the end and her nuanced writing tugs at your heartstrings.
I was in awe with her verses & the feminist and political undertones rendered in her poetry made it even more of a fascinating read.
If you're looking at exploring diverse literature & especially poetry that will invoke strong emotions, then you need to add this collection to your TBR.
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