Marwa Helal is the author of Invasive species (Nightboat Books, 2019), Ante body (Nightboat Books, forthcoming 2022), and winner of BOMB Magazine’s Biennial 2016 Poetry Contest. She is also the author of the chapbook I AM MADE TO LEAVE I AM MADE TO RETURN (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2017) and has been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, NYFA/NYSCA, Poets House, and Cave Canem among others. Born in Al Mansurah, Egypt, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Invasive speciesFrom"Census"
By 1924, there were about 200,000 Arabs living in the United States¹ and by 2000, at least 3.5 million Americans were of Arab descent².
It is 2010. A census form arrives in the mail.
I check OTHER and write-in: A-R-A-B.
In 2016, Obama wants to add a new racial category and has chosen an acronym to describe a group of people: MENA (Middle Eastern and North African)³
I note the absence of the word “Arab.”
Still, they do not sense us⁴.
Invasive species: -
Invasive speciesFrom"generation of feeling"
these growing pains though
this good will hunting
we
fallen twigs
look like bones
waiting to be lit
i am trying to tell you something about how
rearranging words
rearranges the universe
Invasive species: -
Invasive speciesFrom"reality show"
prisoner swap
al azhar’s next top fatwa
the great baklawa baking show
fear factory
meet your dystopian date
weapons deal or no weapons deal
name that war
sanction this
amazing race for clean water
so you think you can poetry?
survivor: post-deportation edition
Invasive species:
“Helal reverses expectations (and syntax) and deflects the unidirectional flow of state authority with a biting sense of humor that jumps from threat to cartoonish mockery to near despair, her only constant a dead-aim of purpose . . . . Drawing on influences as disparate as June Jordan, DJ Khaled, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetics, Helal finds in poetry something that goes beyond resistance or balm, and might even approach hope.” —Publishers Weekly [on Invasive species]
“Candid and confident about its ecosystems of influence, . . . the lyrical avatar of Invasive species is one whose existential impulse seems to be rabid availability - to the poet’s multitude of peoples and places - negotiated crossways by a slick, uppercutting investment in infiltration rather than naturalization, divergence (not 'diversity'), and didacticism as a form of information smuggling.” —Justin Phillip Reed, Adroit
“Helal’s incisive lyrics cut to the core of persistent issues and explode boundaries between genres, combining sparse new forms with newspaper scans, blank maps, scholarly abstracts, and official correspondence . . . . Footnotes and citations complicate the relationship between author, text, and audience, as the book defiantly refuses to categorize itself: ‘journalism is the work of the sleeping. poetry is the work of the dreaming.’ . . . Helal has succeeded in generating poetry that is uniquely African, Arabic, and American. —Diego Báez, ALA Booklist [on Invasive species]
The poems of Marwa Helal are not only marvelously various in form, but emotionally epiphanic. We feel the powerful yearning and resolve in her work, which layers natural, cultural, and even typographic landscapes; her acrobatic syntax amplifies and refracts meaning. She has titled her collection Invasive species, and these poems investigate not only ecological or political phenomena but a powerful poetic identity. The passionate personality of the artist shines through, and we grasp the urgency of her search for the just.