Born Sacred is one of the most earnest collections I have ever read. Sumac writes with a tenderness that refuses to look away. These poems gave shape and language to what I did not know how to articulate. At times, the repetition felt slightly heavy-handed. Then again, that might be the point.

DNF. I wanted to live this, but there was something lacking, lack of emotion, of passion, which is the worst thing to say about a book like this, but I couldn't connect with the emotions of the author or the message of the poems. I have defended Palestine since I can remember, but this book didn't work for me.

Born Sacred is a charged collection of poems highlighting the devastating the events in present-day Palestine as the ongoing genocide wreaks havoc on the people, the land, the spirit, and the hearts of the Indigenous worldwide.

I liked most of the poems in the collection; I think writing 100 poems across 100 days to document the way the poet thinks and feels was incredibly powerful. But there was a sense of doom that I couldn't quite shake though. Of all 100, there was the smallest fraction that had any sense of anticipation for liberation. It made me nauseous being confronted with so much confusion and unbridled negative emotion. These types of collections, especially those as an ode to an oppressed people, deserves a semblance of hope.

If you're not familiar with poetry, I think this collection probably isn't for you. It's a bit difficult to understand at times, and the format takes getting used to for the full impact of the poems to shine through. It's emotionally challenging; the doom just never let's up.

I personally had a difficult time connecting with it. But I would urge people to give it a read, to experience and empathise with the pain and mourning the Indigenous experience watching a genocide so similar to their own.

I received an advanced reader copy of Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine from Netgally in exchange for an honest review. My rating is a 3.00 star.

This one is hard for me, especially if I had rated this based on the forward. It felt a little heavy-handed. Smokii is a member of the Ktunaxa nation (pronounced 'k-too-nah-ha'), they are also neurodivergent and transgender. I was excited to read something from an indigenous writer and a writer part of the neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ communities. I had originally thought this was a collection written by a Palestinian writer and was a little confused at first. I think the description of this collection is misleading and makes it sound like they are Palestinian, which is a disservice to the collection and its message on colonialism.

What Gave Me Pause
Back to the forward, I was a little miffed because it almost felt like that one friend who always has it worse than everyone else, like “oh you broke your leg in two places, I shattered my leg at 14 and it still gives me problems, you’re lucky”. Being a disabled person myself, who is neurodivergent, and queer, I am often confronted with people trying to one-up my experiences with chronic pain and spinal cord degeneration and so much more. It is not empathy; it is erasing my experience to garner attention. It also feels like those people who run up to me putting their hands on me or my wheelchair saying, oh honey, I feel so bad for you, can I pray over you? It feels self-indulgent and icky, which shows how experience can trigger us. I am glad I read on though because instead of allowing that misunderstanding to cloud my judgement, I can now whole-heartedly understand what Smokii was trying to say, even though I was just not a fan of the gaze. They opened my eyes to even more personal experiences from the gaze of a member of an indigenous nation.

While this is not a Palestinian own-voices collection, it is a colonialism own-voices account and so much more. That said, I believe Smokii could have focused on the Ktunaxa nation and given us something culturally personal and poignant. I did read a few of the lower rated reviews to see if I was being a little harsh, but I do agree with some criticisms. I am not part of any indigenous nation, nor am I Palestinian so I felt my opinion, in this context, was not valid. But as one reviewer, Omar Ramadan, put it, “There is so much wrong in this book that I am not too sure where to start. From the Orientalist gaze a lot of the poetry is couched in, to the way these poems reek of privilege and attempt assuage the author's guilt for not being able to do anything meaningful while Zionists genocide Palestinian people, to attempting to insert themselves as the voice necessary for this moment and taking up space that is undeserved.” I think that is the main takeaway here “attempting to insert themselves as the voice necessary for this moment”. I can surely see how this can come across that way.

I was not a big fan of the layout. While this might be an issue with the digital copy, the lack of some punctuation and/or delineation in several areas made it necessary to go back and reread certain parts. I am not new to poetry. I am an avid poetry reader, so I get the “no punctuation” choice, but the layout in the version I got made it quite hard to not read as a run-on which always brought me to an abrupt stop and having to go back to reread.

Where It Shines
From their place in the Ktunaxa nation, Smokii speaks of the effects of colonization on not only their indigenous ancestors, but the inequalities that still affect their lives today. I think drawing parallels to what is happening today in Gaza felt forced, though. Like they wanted to write about their own feelings about Ktunaxa colonization but felt in the face of what is happening in Gaza that they had to form a parallel. I tried to read this as just poetry, judging just based on the writing itself. Smokii’s prose, at times, are simply divine and can make the reader forget about the things that feel wrong about the collection.

I highlighted so many passages. Choosing what to share here was so hard. Smokii verbalizes the deep wells of emotion that so many of us naturally empathetic readers feel and understand. What comes across genuinely I the pain and tears and worse, anxiety that feeling deeply and feeling helpless causes.

Take Away
I think given at face value, Smokii wrote what she was feeling, what many of us are feeling watching helplessly from worlds away from what is happening in Gaza. I think so many of us feel the same sense of dread, sadness, and anger. With that said, I think it is important, in these moments, to step aside and give the stage to Palestinian writers and journalist. Lifting their voices so that their struggle is not being compared to or overshadowed by another group's experience. Right now, they need the light shown directly on Gaza. Smokii’s voice and her experience as Ktunaxa have a place and I am eager to read her other published work, You are Enough: Love Poems for the End of the World. I am also looking up more of Smokii’s history online, to get a sense of the writer and their experiences. What I know is that getting the stories, the histories, and the sufferings of any POC in front of white people is essential. In the end, it was the white man who has always been the oppressor, and it will take the white man waking up to put an end to their own horrible behaviors and conquering ways. It takes other white people shaming them and shaming and challenging their ways to force change, because change in this instance has to be forced.

Excerpt from Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine:
“sobbing I watched a video of a Palestinian child crying for their mother
how do we go on? felt the deep well of pain inside me
remembering crying on my own
how many generations taught not to cry? To take it out on themselves?
the least i can do is weep today and let the truth break me open our Ktunaxa nation went to the supreme court to fight for our sacred places
all places are sacred
the court said our name wrong told us
our religion has no space here
the developer of the proposed ski resort said
he wouldn’t call that place sacred
all places are sacred
yesterday they bombed a church in Palestine
a church that was older than the state of Isreal
and i think of how when notre dame burned
financially wealthy white people sent millions
what of that which is sacred to us?
all places all people all children born sacred I will kiss you in heaven”

Encapsulated a lot of the grief and helplessness i felt watching this genocide from afar, and some hope for the future. The author's relationship to colonialism in the native community interwove with their experience and their work in such a painfully beautiful way.

Thanks, netgalley, for this ARC.

Smokii Sumac puts into words everything that I have been feeling over the past year and a half (and more). Through poetry and prose, they describe the pain, confusion, guilt, hope, and anxieties of our times. Positioned in Ktunaxa ways of knowing, they give a voice to the indescribable grief of bearing witness to genocide and colonialism, from Palestine (Gaza) to Turtle Island. This collection of 100 poems broke me, put me back together, and reminded me that at the end of the day we all have one another—we must continue in the fight for collective liberation and find hope in allyship.

Thank you to the NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

The day before I read "Born Sacred," I asked someone if there was a word for secondhand PTSD, for thinking about what the sound of planes mean to the people of Palestine every time a plane flies over my house. It's not PTSD, really, and it's not exactly fear, but it's a type of physical pain. Secondhand trauma, maybe. Knowing that I'm complicit in the ongoing genocide despite my small efforts to end it.

Smokii Sumac gives voice to all these feelings and more. As a Ktunaxa poet (and transmasculine person), he wrestles with his own ignorance of distant violence even as he processes ancestral trauma and government erasure. He acknowledges that none of us are free until all of us are free, and admits that he bought a tablet despite knowing how our tech is made. Sometimes, it felt like he was plucking thoughts out of my head. Other times, his comparisons of Ktunaxa history and the Palestinian present reinforced a picture that's come into focus only too recently for me.

It seems that there are 100 poems in this collection, but sometimes the ARC copies I get have formatting issues. In my versions, lines breaks were erratic and there was no visual distinction between poems. I have no idea where poems began and ended, and their overlapping themes and recurring imagery made this read like one long piece that all blurred together, which is how the last year and a half or so has felt.

I will always encourage people to read Palestinian voices first, but I felt---and I think many other readers of similar age and circumstance will feel---immense kinship with Sumac's articulation of how surreal it is to balance resistance with practical everyday concerns, or to make dinner while being constantly aware that people whose names and faces are as familiar as a friend's (Bisan, Plestia, Motaz, and in my case, Ibraheem) are under siege and starving. I very much recommend this collection.

Solid poetry collection done by an Indigenous Canadian poet as they witness the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

This poetry collection is as beautiful as it is devastating, yet, extremely necessary reading. I encourage everyone to read this especially those of us who were fighting for Palestine everyday for the last year and a half now.

With every poem I felt my heart constricting and my breath sucked right out of my lungs; I relived so many horrors I repressed and buried deep within me because I couldn't manage to cope with the livestreamed genocide. The use of repetition and cascading words really nails home the sinking feeling of the grief and madness that came with standing up for Palestine. Yet in it was strength in community and comradery.

Reem. Precious Reem. I'll never forget her and the poems including her ripped my ribs right open and took my heart with her. Every face and body came rushing forth with the grief buried deep within me. These poems are full of emotion, rage, anguish, and crushing depression; I felt every last raw evisercating feeling a person could feel. And yet, these poems helped me, it reminded me that you need to feel your grief collectively instead of suffering alone and in silence. There is no strength in solitude and we must rely on one another.

I really adores the inclusion of the author's Khutaxa language and translations, the concept of reconciliation woven throughout the poems really helped ground the grief into action and hope. There is hope in grief and we can continue to fight together.

You can feel the sadness on every page. The similarities in past, present, and eventual future. Brilliantly written, makes you think and absolutely makes you feel.

I thought the preface was a brilliant break down of how deeply rooted the hunger for land can be and how closely related the continued assault on Palestine is much like the perpetual taking of inches of indigenous communities' lands. Throughout the poems, there are continual similarities shared between the history of both issues, and it's like being in the middle of watching history repeat itself-- even with how the pages are set up often, there's this past and future, and present marked by the movement between the two. You can feel the sadness that feels universal of just watching this happen in clips on the news.

Yo se que tengo que leer la descripcion del libro y no basarme en el titulo o en la portada. Tambien se que el arte es una manera de protestar sobre las injusticias del mundo en el que vivimos, pero, hay veces que se vuelve muy repetitivo y quiero creer que si, en parte el libro es original, siento que estoy leyendo lo mismo que en otros libros con el mismo tema.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in April. This poetry book was stunning. It's a beautiful Indigenous, queer and disabled introspective and commentary on what is happening in Palestine, and a very personal and emotional read.

The contrast within the poems opens my heart. This is the type of poetry collection I would shove down in the postal box of all my friends, no note, no explanation, just the words speaking for themselves.

It’s poetry that needs to be read, absorbed, reflected upon. The kind that settles into your bones and changes shape depending on the light. I'm obsessed and will try to acquire a physical copy ASAP - some words are meant to be held and kept permanently.

This is a hard book to rate as it's about such an important and vital topic, one that I am woefully undereducated in. Sumac, an indigenous poet, descended from a colonised nation who experienced genocide first-hand, so he comes at the topic from a place of understanding and empathy.
I often feel I am too stupid for poetry, to really "get" it, but this collection really resonated with me, and I feel like I understand the need to witness these atrocities and feel our feelings deeply.

I do think perhaps the preface may have had more impact had it been at the end of the book, or maybe in sections interspersed. It was a lot to get through before I even got to the poems and figured out if they were for me!

Thanks to #NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

This collection is so important. I feel every word of it and I feel so helpless. Can I do more? Can I help these poor people that live in a nightmare? The initiative of this collection is heart warming. But I also hope that I don't have to read a hundred more poems for the people av Palestine.

Thanks to Netgalley, the Publisher and the author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a powerful and moving collection exploring the shared suffering between a First Nations tribe in Canada and the conflict in Palestine. The poet writes with passion and energy, using their voice to highlight the tragedies both peoples have experienced.