Mona Arshi Libri

Winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best First Collection Mona Arshi's debut collection, 'Small Hands', introduces a brilliant and compelling new 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'.

Ruby gives up talking at a young age. Her mother isn't always there to notice; she comes and goes and goes and comes, until, one day, she doesn't. Silence becomes Ruby's refuge, sheltering her from the weather of her mother's mental illness and a pressurized suburban atmosphere