Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear

Written entirely in Gaza, where the poet was born and raised under blockade and repeated wars, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear records what it means to make a life — and a poem — under drones, bombs, and power cuts. Against that violence Abu Toha sets the stubborn particulars of endurance: strawberries, jasmine, a father’s garden, the sea. The collection closes with an extended interview in which the poet reflects on writing in English, his family’s dispossession from Yaffa, and poetry as a form of staying.

Published by City Lights in 2022, the debut won the American Book Award and the Palestine Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Its poems reached a vast new readership as Gaza’s destruction deepened, and its author came to embody literature as witness.

About the author

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet, scholar, and librarian from Gaza, founder of the Edward Said Public Library there. A Harvard and Syracuse alumnus, he has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times; his second collection is Forest of Noise (2024).

Details

• Published by City Lights Books, 2022
• Winner of the American Book Award and the Palestine Book Award; NBCC finalist