after Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Will the bullet wake up in its chamber this morning? Will the bullet turn on the kettle, choose between black tea or coffee? Will the bullet map out its journey or wander off meandering? Will the bullet wear a raincoat or take an umbrella? Will the bullet stop at the traffic light or the checkpoint? Will the bullet queue up at the grocery store or the food line? Will the bullet return to sit in its chamber? Will the bullet turn on the TV, choose between a news channel or Netflix? Will the bullet recognise the boy? Will the bullet recognise the side of his skull? Will the bullet remember the dream? Will the bullet bend? Will the bullet bend?
Biography
Sumia Juxun is an elder sister, poet, and educator based between London, UK and Tkaronto, Canada. A Barbican Young Poet alumna and current writer-in-session at Toronto Reference Library’s Writers’ Room, her interdisciplinary practice explores rituals of departure, grief and gathering as a way of coming back to ourselves and to each other.
Juxun is a contributor to Poetics of Refusal, Vocal Opacities, YUMNA and The Anarchist Citizenship: People Made of Stories among other collaborations. Her poems have recently appeared in Grief Studies Zine and Unveiling, and has been shortlisted for the Creative Future Writers’ Award 2024, The White Review Poet’s Prize 2022, and won the FourHubs Poetry Prize 2019.
She has been invited to residencies at Hedgebrook and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and concluded her role as Research Lecturer in Rotterdam by further developing Cycles of Return: Poetics as a Methodology for Imagination, Movement and Waywardness shaped by the works of Saidiya Hartman, Joy James, June Jordan, Christina Sharpe, Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Aracelis Girmay to name a few. This work is an extension of the work she developed with Project Sawti, exploring poetry as preservation, how longstanding oral traditions and collective storytelling serve as living archives of memory and transformation.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.