Blue, Babe
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Nine Arches Press
Publishing:3rd Sep '26
£11.99
This title is due to be published on 3rd September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Poems about the dynamics of family, womanhood, love and survival, from an acclaimed performer
Blue, Babe examines the dynamics of family life and how humans hold on to love and survival in illuminating poems full of reflection and hope. This second collection by Shagufta K. Iqbal delves into the experiences of women amidst conflict, colonial legacies, climate injustice, and the domestic everyday.
Blue, Babe examines the dynamics of family life and how humans hold on to love and survival in illuminating poems full of reflection and hope. This second collection by Shagufta K. Iqbal delves into the experiences of women amidst conflict, colonial legacies, climate injustice, and the domestic everyday.
As the poems explore how we make families, Iqbal centres women’s stories and spaces, gathering narratives from telephone calls and conversations, in the handing over of family recipes and passing down of histories that encounter war, partition and displacement. Between relationships and family, Blue, Babe also delves into marriage and motherhood, divorce and friendship. Above all, this dazzling, lyrical collection is dedicated to how we learn to love, and trust in love again.
‘Blue, Babe is an evocative and unflinching ode to womanhood. A lyrical tour de force.’
-- Zeba Talkhani‘Pick up the tin-can phone under a night sky and Blue, Babe answers. Shagufta K. Iqbal has written a collection that asks: is love the wound, the healing, the ruin & rebuild, or D) all of the above? And the answer, every time, is D. Formally playful, tender and incisive, this astonishing collection explores the slow, radical work of new beginnings against a tapestry of families and desire. There are hungry galaxies, ghosts trading love stories, lemon trees, and a grandmother walking out of the house with a rifle in her hands. I want you to love these poems the way I do–in astonishment at their bravery and bite. “If a tomato is a fruit because it has seeds” and “anything with seeds can be hope”, Iqbal’s poems are a greenhouse bursting with tomatoes and winter light.’
-- Cynthia Miller‘Shagufta’s poems sing like a canary in the coalmine - for all we have lived, and for all our children have yet to live.’
-- SabbaISBN: 9781916760462
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