Overview

Winner of the Purple Ink Press Poetry Contest. October in Lebanon is heavy with memory. The euphoria of the 2019 revolution feels far away, its anniversaries marked by crisis, war and the genocide in Gaza. Across multiple Octobers, Nur Turkmani meditates on rupture, transformation and the quiet undoing and remaking of relationships during collective catastrophe. Part archive, part love letter, her debut poetry collection holds the ordinary and the extraordinary in the same breath, spanning balconies and border towns, fig trees and songs for friends, autumn light and the instinct to flee. Formally spare and emotionally saturated, October refuses both numbness and spectacle. These poems ask what it means to survive the world and still long for it; and how we hold what’s disappearing, or changing too quickly to make sense of.

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9781914221408

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Reviews

‘This beautiful debut collection is structured by the big picture events of a life in Beirut over six Octobers … But despite the largeness of its frame, this collection deals primarily in tender intimacies. Through friendship, love, care, and everyday landscapes … Turkmani draws a portrait of a city and life within it that is rich and haunted by violences.’ — Mizna ‘Turkmani writes with startling clarity about bodies, orchards, kitchens, music, and mothers, and what it means to stay awake in devastation without surrendering beauty. In these pages, October is not only a month but a condition: of in-between, of aftermath, of breath held and released. This collection remembers, refuses erasure, and dares to insist on joy.’ — Noor Hindi, author of DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW. ‘A gorgeous collection that glitters like the height of autumn and the sea in dream. “I still wish I could sing,” says the speaker of the first poem, but it quickly becomes clear that this is a poet who can’t help but sing—urgently, piercingly—on every page … At once heartbreaking and heart-building, this book knows that “we’re alive” and (in the very next line) “there’s much to lose,” so make it count, every word, each breath.’ — Chen Chen, author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities ‘[A] beautiful debut … October insists on poetry as a way of carrying across—of naming what persists when everything is under threat—so that even now, “to have lived is to have seen”, and seeing, however painful, remains an act of faith.’ — Hala Alyan, author of I’ll Tell You When I’m Home ‘Through a voice that is tender and compelling, and a generous, big-hearted vision, these poems accomplish the seemingly impossible: to recover with grace and dignity the untold cruelties of history, and to restore with passion and faithfulness the unabashed love for the places and people we call home.’ — Hayan Charara, author of These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit ‘The first thing I did when I finished reading Nur Turkmani’s October was to begin reading it again. These poems make you greedy—for the loves, the afternoons, and the cities they elegise … Turkmani’s lyrical, timeless, wandering poems insist on the world-remaking possibilities inherent in poetry.’ — Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, author of Something About Living ‘Nur Turkmani’s shimmering debut aches with longing—for beauty, for the sea and for freedom in all its forms. Filled with moments of arresting beauty, this collection moves in the direction of the horizon.’ — Zena Agha, author of Objects from April and May ‘Nur Turkmani’s writing reawakens our ability to feel. She shapes the clay of daily life into a repository of the soul … Bold in its scope and caring in its tone, October melds the mess of awe and grace and rage and grief to make a glittering, gripping whole.’ — Sylee Gore, author of Maximum Summer ‘A tender and heartbreaking collection … holding beauty, joy, grief, longing, and sensuality … Nur Turkmani’s debut is a gorgeous, intimate ode to loss and to life.’ — Zeina Hashem Beck, author of O

Author Information

Nur Turkmani is a writer from Beirut. Her work appears in Poetry, New England Review, Copper Nickel, The Rumpus and others. October is her debut poetry collection and was selected by Chen Chen as winner of the Purple Ink Press Poetry Contest. Nur is at work on a short story collection and was awarded the Anthony Veasna So Scholarship for fiction from The Adroit Journal. She studied creative writing at the University of Oxford and politics at the London School of Economics and the American University of Beirut.

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