Intifadas - by Edward Salem (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner of 2024 Sarabande 2024 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, the 2023 Nightboat Poetry Prize and selected by Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winning poet Louise Glück as Finalist for the 2021 Bergman Prize

Intifadas is a subtly transgressive poetry collection about uprising in its many forms--in art, politics, and in our most personal relationships. Channeling influences such as Taha Mohammed Ali, Daniel Borzutsky, and Tony Hoagland, these voice-driven narrative poems seek out meaning through personal, discrete acts of resistance.

Written across the Palestinian diaspora--from Gaza and the West Bank to across the United States--Intifadas confront their personal and ancestral alienation using their environment as their canvas. Whether by dumping black paint on a park where a tank and fighter jet commemorate a war, or by trying to rescue a moth trapped in a garage, they find empowerment in creative expression. These poems process familial loss, exile and occupation while representing the defiant and resilient voices who continue to resist the machinations of war subverting traditional narratives of grief, trauma and oppression.

Review Quotes

Praise for Intifadas

"This is a book of poems steeped in tenderness and love for a place, for a people. [...] there is also a richness, a depth of humanity that shines through in the work, and the desire to uplift and protect that humanity might drive you to deep affection, which may flip the switch of rage, which may, I hope, flip the second switch, of action.

--Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There's Always This Year

Praise for Monk Fruit

"As Salem's lines accrue and turn, thoughts twist along their length in a series of sleight of hand gestures, unfolding a deeply lived-in political and aesthetic consciousness, one that knows consensus reality is a boring myth and absurdity beats out piety for lasting impact every time. With rare skill and generosity, Salem by-passes ideology, finds a side door, and rearranges the furniture."

--Lindsey Boldt, author of Weirding

About the Author

Edward Salem is the author of Monk Fruit (Nightboat, 2025) and Intifadas (Sarabande, 2026), which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, selected by Hanif Abdurraqib, and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His fiction can be found in Granta and BOMB. Born in Detroit to Palestinian parents, he was an artist throughout his thirties, working in performance, street interventions, and experimental film. His work has been exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, The Hangar in Beirut, and many other venues. He currently resides in Detroit and is the founding co-director of City of Asylum/Detroit.