Born Sacred Poems for Palestine is a profound work of grace and solidarity rooted in a hardearned understanding of colonialisms insatiable appetite What Smokii Sumac has done over the course of 100 searing openhearted poems is give voice to the immeasurable grief of bearing witness to genocide the overwhelming magnitude of it colliding with a knowledge that this has happened before that there is an ageold methodology to the act of endless taking I am so grateful for this work for this beautiful honest reminder that whatever power empires wield we have what it can never take We have one another

– Omar El Akkad author of What Strange Paradise

This collection is the antidote to the silence and cowardice of millions and the medicine for those who watched the first recorded genocide unfold and needed to be seen and witnessed Creating room for collective grief Smokii Sumac shows us the responsibility and power of the poet to face the blank page in the here and now and the necessity for words to remain as a testimony to history Born Sacred is an essential work in the fight for collective liberation and a reminder that hope can be rooted in allyship

– Rayya Liebich author of Min Hayati

The succinct starkness of Smokii Sumacs offerings are an XRay to the grief and absurdity of our times This dangerous dichotomy of trying to live ones everyday life while holding the tragedy of everyday loss is profoundly captured in each stanza

– Catherine Hernandez author and screenwriter of Scarborough

I am always drawn to the constellational consciousness that permeates so many Asian refugee Indigenous and Black literary and cultural works This constellational consciousness the culturallyinformed relational view of life and solidarity in struggle is vital in Smokii Sumacs collection In both form and content the poems shatter dominating linear and compartmentalizing interpretations of the world with constellating stanzas voices and experiences that reveal the intertwined histories and presents of colonial harm and Indigenous survivance

– Maral AguileraMoradipour assistant professor Asian refugee literatures and cultures SFU