What to Count

With heart and insight, the poems in Alise Alousi’s What to Count speak to what it means to come of age as an Iraqi American during the first Gulf War and its continuing aftermath, but also to the joy and complexity of motherhood, daughterhood, and what it means to live a creative life. More than a description of the world, Alousi’s poetry actively lives in and of the world. These poems explore the nuances of memory through the changes wrought by time, conflict, and distance. In ＂The Ocularist＂ and ＂Art,＂ and others, Alousi’s extraordinary verbal deftness precisely locates the still-tender pains and triumphs of collective beingwhile trying to be an individual in the world. What to Count is a remarkable collection of contemporary poetry-both a lyrical splendor and a contemplative account of lineage, silenced history, and identity.

Alise Alousi is a 2019 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and has received awards from Knight Arts Detroit, Mesa Refuge and others. Her work has been widely anthologized including in the collections To Light a Fire: 20 Years with the InsideOut Literary Arts Project, Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry (both Wayne State University Press) and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry. She works at InsideOut Literary Arts and has been an active part of the literary arts in metro Detroit for many years. She currently serves on the steering committee for Room Project, a workspace for women and nonbinary writers in Detroit and teaches poetry to teens at the Arab American National Museum.