Mona Arshi's debut collection, Small Hands, introduces a brilliant and compelling new voice. At the center of the book is the slow detonation of grief after her brother's death but her work focuses on the whole variety of human experience: pleasure, hardship, tradition, energised by language which is in turn both tender and risky. Often startling as well as lyrical, Arshi's poems resist fixity; there is a gentle poignancy at work here which haunt many of the poems. This is humane poetry. Arshi's is a daring, moving and original voice.

Following Arshi's Forward prize-winning collection, Small Hands, this book continues in its lyrical exploration of grief. Moving and discomfiting, these poems tune to the dangers and violences of the contemporary world, yet, at the centre of this book is an overarching commitment to hope and its 'churning, broken song'.

Quick before the story ebbs away. There are things I need to tell you A work of great strength and equal delicacy, Mouth transports us to a world where violence hangs in the air, where beauty, pity and cruelty intertwine. The sequence at its heart, Palace, takes the overlooked women from the edges of Greek tragedy and places them centre stage, to tell unforgettable stories of survival and loss. With new depth and force, their voices set off echoes with women navigating the terrible reality and aftermath of war today. As a human rights lawyer, Arshi saw power and its abuses, the structures...