Sara M. Saleh

Sara M. Saleh is the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, living and learning on Gadigal land. A human rights activist, community organiser, and campaigner for refugee rights and racial justice, she has spent over a decade in grassroots and international organisations in Australia and the Middle East. A poet and writer, Sara’s pieces have been published in English and Arabic in SBS Life, Australian Poetry Journal, Meanjin, Cordite Poetry Review, Bankstown Poetry Collections, and the Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II, and global anthologies Making Mirrors, Solid Air: Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word, and A Blade of Grass, alongside internationally renowned Palestinian poets Fady Joudah and Naomi Shehab Nye. Sara is co-editor of the recently released anthology, Arab-Australian-Other: Stories on Race and Identity. She is currently developing her first novel as a recipient of the inaugural Affirm Press Mentorship for Sweatshop Western Sydney. Sara is a proud Bankstown Poetry Slam 'Slambassador’.

'A Poetics of Fo(u)rgetting' by Sara M. Saleh

January–February 2021, no. 428 • 27 January 2021

i.I forget tradition, a tray of sticky dates passed around the kitchen table, bismillahin our mouths before we ravenously break the dusk, chew and spit back the pits. Ma ladlinglumpy lentil soup, abandonment pouched in her long sleeves, an old injury she does notstop pressing. How are we still here? Made of garlic breath, violent affection, arrears.Ma pushes, alhamdullilah for these bounties, we a ... (read more)