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summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

reviewing final page proofs for THE HUNGERING YEARS and i just luv how the ampersand looks ‼️

AT THE MET CLOISTERS
I count what does not belong.
In the rare treasures room, heads shuffle
closer from across display glass.
People fall in love around stolen objects.
I long to drink out of the cup from
“Somewhere in the Near East.”
The label reads crusaders & merchants alike
loved to carry fragile objects from the
Holy Land, even at risk of breaking. Encased in
glass, we are remembered for when they were fragile.
There is only one object labeled “Somewhere
in the Near East” in the rare treasures room.
How often were they careful with our bodies.

November 15, 2025 at 4:57 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

you can now pre-order THE HUNGERING YEARS, out from
@hostpublications.bsky.social
2.24.26 💜🌻 hostpublications.com/collections/...

November 5, 2025 at 8:29 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

happy november 5 👼 poets.org/poem/after-m...

After Mount Tamalpais, I Tell Etel Adnan About Supernatural - Summer Farah
"I make paintings and watercolors of Tamalpais. Again and again. Why do I insist? Am I trying to hold some image, to capture some meaning, to assert its presence, to measure myself to its timelessness, to fight, or to accept? —Etel Adnan, Journey to Mount Tamalpais"

I understand, I tell her, the desire to not only return but to be consumed. I have had obsessions, I have been made small by those obsessions, I wonder if you would agree it is possible for something to be absolute but still unseen. I was Cassandra, once. I wanted dearly to go to the mountain. Instead of cliches, I design my pulse to loneliness anew. It’s different than ten years ago—I go outside, now, take its contradiction with me. Oh the most painful love-story of them all! These gaps between comprehension! I could never forget, no matter how many times they beg me to. The mountain was there before us and it will be there after. Yes, a return; each journey wrought another history, each day I try to capture its form; why do I insist? In lieu of a paintbrush, I sew my voice in its throat. In the Beginning, there was Blood, Horror, Myth, Obsession; and then there was Love, there was, I swear, when the static spilled! again and again, our eyes stained with its evidence, We find new proof uncovered on every return. We were all Cassandra, once, young and hysterical, oh, I hope you’ll understand I take it so seriously when I say the violence shifted subjects. Oh, we screamed! we screamed! We swore our eyes were true! Audience becomes the blood, the horror, the myth, the static, Again, and again, you said, again, and again, I say, again, again.

Chart with the categories "disproved by canon / not disproved by canon / actually canon" on the horizontal line and "lightly implied / heavily implied / practically canon" on vertical line with a still of dean and castiel supernatural hugging filling up every section

November 5, 2025 at 3:46 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

was also really touched + impressed by the thoughtful way with which she developed each speaker, so beautifully distinct but clearly in conversation with each other, too [in response to what "bloodmercy" means]

Blood, obviously, has multiple meanings to it, too, right? It means kinship; it can also mean history. When I think about the biblical implication of [blood], after Cain kills his brother, God says, your brother’s blood wails to me from the ground. Blood also means connection, and it means bond, but it is also a language on its own. What does it mean to always be bound to another person? Even families who maybe break contact still carry pieces of each other with them. No matter how much you might be in disharmony with your family, you are still of them, you know? Bloodmercy. In the book, it’s very clear that the sisters have a borderline codependent relationship. When I was thinking about how to differentiate the voices of Cain, Eve, and Abel, I was thinking about the three modes of poetry. Lyrical. Abel is narrative. Eve is dramatic. If we’re writing this same poem from Cain’s perspective, she’s gonna be rapping a little bit. If we’re writing this poem from Abel’s perspective, she has a lot to say, especially because, canonically, Abel does not have a voice in the original fable. I wanted a single word that evoked the suffocating nature of family. My enduring questions to God.

November 4, 2025 at 4:12 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

with an introduction by lena khalaf tuffaha :) here the poem that gives the book its name that she curated in a folio for @prairie-schooner.bsky.social
prairieschooner.unl.edu/fusion/the-f...

I learn independence through the cost of fruit / a walk in blazing sun / plastic bags full, weighing into the veins of my fingers. This, the first summer away from home. Can you spend 14 years in one place & not leave parts of yourself behind? At the end of my hungering year I broke my fast with figs / olive loaf fresh from farmers market / creme fraiche melting on tongues / legs crossed against kitchen tile, knees brushing knees; what will I sacrifice to remember this? Here, I makeup for all that I have denied myself. There is no balm for restriction greater than a sugar lying quickly to a better judgment. I pretend there is something ancestral in this. Umang says Abundance is raspberries, figs, bed sheets, poetry. Excess is watching them rot. I imagine the figtrees along stone staircases my mother used to scale. I imagine a mediterranean sun sweltering leaves that adorn soft bodies. I imagine a world in which I have no hungering year, a world that does not make me wish to have one. Mama says everything is changing too fast; for weeks we hunger for nothing but shawarma made by someone else. A home disappears around us & I wonder what will happen to the lemon tree by the window. Solmaz Sharif writes A life is a thing you have to start. I hear her / yet I wait, noticing skin in places I wouldn’t have allowed before. Sometimes the hungering year returns, as long as a second / a yearning / a spiral / against a public sidewalk / the molding of figs in my palm / among the grass of my parents’ yard. Can you spend 14 years in one place & not leave parts of yourself behind? Yes. You must not have come with anything to begin with.

October 27, 2025 at 5:55 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

if you are a magazine or freelancer or person who otherwise writes & talks about books and would like to review/interview me about THE HUNGERING YEARS (@hostpublications.bsky.social) please reach out via my contact form or to my publisher :) cover coming soon. here is a description of the book.

Utterly magnetic, Summer Farah’s debut poetry collection The Hungering Years is a rush of breathless song, voicing confessions so often left unsung amidst personal and collective crisis. “I am afraid of asking the right questions,” Farah admits. But through intimate conversations with fellow Arab-American writer and literary ancestor Etel Adnan, this work finds the courage to ask: What is art? An escape? A reflection? Another unhealthy attachment? Though the answers are elusive, what steps into the light is a collective of friends whose genuine care and companionship anchor these poems through their spiraling search.

“I am always looking for Palestine, and yes, I am always looking for love,” these poems croon, holding so much of the world even as they trace an inheritance of displacement. The Hungering Years conjures startling landscapes where we may also experience what it is to be consumed by obsession, echoing with songs by Mitski, iconic scenes from Supernatural, and the sound of the Mediterranean Sea. But as Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes in her introduction, Farah’s repetitions “are more than echo. They are a vernacular of this unspeakable era,” anchored in “questions that keep us reaching toward life,” and questions toward each other.

Building glass structures from her questions, Farah pushes their architecture almost to breaking. Then breaking, the spirit—luminous, actualized—reveals itself through the cracks. Through the landscapes of California, Palestine, and all of the distances in between, there emerges a new sense of devotion to what is possible which might thrust us, together, “off the edge, / in love, towards God.”

October 27, 2025 at 5:52 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

and here's a snippet of what she said when i asked about the angels

While the creative practices of the “Divine” and “Oracle” sections involved my awareness and intention, the angels came as a surprise! In Deluge, I have a poem called “Angel” that was the first “night poem” I ever wrote, though I didn’t have a name for that process at the time. The poem begins: “After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice.” There’s been this need in me for many years now, as long as I can remember, for something beyond to speak to me, and I am listening for it all the time. I remember feeling very silly as a child, standing next to the ocean waiting for some sign, a single word. To tell me what? I didn’t know. I don’t know. But I knew to hear it would change me. And so I kept returning to the places that felt, to me, sacred—the sea, the night, the page. That desire for a voice to tell me something is at the core of this book. And angels are messengers—that’s the root of the word, in most of the languages that speak of them. My original notions of a voice visiting me came from my faith, in the form of angels.

In Islam, angels are a bit more present, more commonplace, than in Christianity; I mean, we believe there are angels assigned to always be with us. And they’re important—it’s one of the six pillars of faith, belief in angels, second only to belief in God! In Islam, angels are not so antiquated. You might encounter one going about your day, and you wouldn’t be considered crazy. I’m sure their presence in the poems comes from these concurrent associations in my subconscious mind: angels as symbols of faith, of writing, of messages, and of madness. Angels are also made of light, and this is a book interested in shadow, and in opposites. They are figures of reason and the mind. They can only ever follow rules.

October 14, 2025 at 4:05 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

loved this book dearly - leila's work means a lot to me & so i knew i would likely resonate with Wildness but my goodness. cried over so many of the poems, felt my approach to my own work sharpening as i spent time with the book over & over again. here's my favorite 👼

Angels

I didn't expect angels, but
they kept coming. A flicker
in the street's margin of shadow.
A mote of gold particulate
pirouetting by the window.
I asked them can you tell me--am I good?
but they had little authority.
Useless, really, angels--all aureate
mist and feathers and superegatory
patience. But I can't abandon them
to terrestrial cruelty. When they arrive, newly
individual and foolish, I
pour them cool water from a pitcher, I offer
blackberries and white cheese. Needless
though they are, on bright mornings
when they stay sleeping (like children, their faces
I decide are mine)--I keep the curtains closed
against the obliterated sky.

October 14, 2025 at 4:04 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

20th anniversary of supernatural :) poets.org/poem/after-m...

Title: After Mount Tamalpais, I Tell Etel Adnan About Supernatural
Epigraph: I make paintings and watercolors of Tamalpais. Again and again. Why do I insist? Am I trying to hold some image, to capture some meaning, to assert its presence, to measure myself to its timelessness, to fight, or to accept? —Etel Adnan, Journey to Mount Tamalpais
Poem: I understand, I tell her, the desire to not only return but to be consumed. I have had obsessions, I have been made small by those obsessions, I wonder if you would agree it is possible for something to be absolute but still unseen. I was Cassandra, once. I wanted dearly to go to the mountain. Instead of cliches, I design my pulse to loneliness anew. It’s different than ten years ago—I go outside, now, take its contradiction with me. Oh the most painful love-story of them all! These gaps between comprehension! I could never forget, no matter how many times they beg me to. The mountain was there before us and it will be there after. Yes, a return; each journey wrought another history, each day I try to capture its form; why do I insist? In lieu of a paintbrush, I sew my voice in its throat. In the Beginning, there was Blood, Horror, Myth, Obsession; and then there was Love, there was, I swear, when the static spilled! again and again, our eyes stained with its evidence, We find new proof uncovered on every return. We were all Cassandra, once, young and hysterical, oh, I hope you’ll understand I take it so seriously when I say the violence shifted subjects. Oh, we screamed! we screamed! We swore our eyes were true! Audience becomes the blood, the horror, the myth, the static, Again, and again, you said, again, and again, I say, again, again.

September 13, 2025 at 3:53 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

very lucky I got to edit this wonderful chapbook. grateful to spend time with it today in its final form for the #sealeychallenge

August 19, 2025 at 3:28 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

catching up on the #sealeychallenge. still time to sponsor my read #endthegenocideingaza

August 19, 2025 at 3:28 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

here's the poem where the book gets its title, published in @prairie-schooner.bsky.social FUSION issue, curated by @lenakt.bsky.social 💜

August 15, 2025 at 3:10 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

yesterday's #sealeychallenge; reminder you can pledge to sponsor my reading with a donation to the sameer project #endthegenocideingaza

have you been wanting to go to sleep and not wake up

August 15, 2025 at 9:56 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

am a little behind on the #sealeychallenge but today's read was won in an auction to support crips4esims ~ rereading a fave!

August 14, 2025 at 4:24 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

pulling double-duty for the #sealeychallenge today, first with a book I am still learning to read, as we continue to process the unprocessable with the murder of anas al-sharif & countless others at the hands of the zionist occupation

August 11, 2025 at 2:56 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

everything I own is in boxes except for this book b/c I wanted to keep it close while I finished a piece on it, a reread for day 9 of the #sealeychallenge #endthegenocideingaza

WILDNESS BEFORE SOMETHING SUBLIME BY LEILA CHATTI

August 10, 2025 at 2:52 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

#sealeychallenge day 8! #endthegenocideingaza

August 9, 2025 at 5:10 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

#SEALEYCHALLENGE day 6: revisited a beloved collection, thinking so much of aziza & all of the reverberations of their work + influence on people I love, people I am in awe of.

August 7, 2025 at 3:56 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

okay here's my actual day 5 of the #sealeychallenge! committing to this challenge to fulfill the pledges to the sameer project inshallah #endthegenocideingaza

August 6, 2025 at 4:59 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

early morning catch up for the #sealeychallenge with a beloved forthcoming book, how lucky are we to have 5am to read #endthegenocideingaza

MORE AMERICANS BELIEVE THEY'VE SEEN A GHOST THAN A TRANS PERSON

August 5, 2025 at 12:59 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

almost forgot to post for #sealeychallenge! Forgive me for the images from Instagram but I could not simply attempt to retake these. spent time w a book by one of my besties for her birthday 💗
#endthegenocideingaza

August 4, 2025 at 3:38 AM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

really loved my day 2 #sealeychallenge book, feeling even more eager to finish the month & fulfill the pledges to the sameer project folks have pitched in on my behalf #endthegenocideingaza

Threesome in the Last Totoya Celica & other poems by m. mick powell

August 2, 2025 at 8:57 PM

summer farah

@summ.bsky.social

this August I'm committing to read 31 books of poetry for the #sealeychallenge; pledge to sponsor my challenge through donations to the sameer project (link below) & mobilize each day to #EndtheGenocideinGaza