We're All Made Of Lightning - Khadro Mohamed 2023

We’re All Made of Lightning by Khadro Mohamed

Published by: We Are Babies Press, Tender Press

Winner of: JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR POETRY, BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD

The Jessie Mackay Prize for Poetry was awarded from 1940 by PEN NZ and named for the first locally born poet to achieve national prominence.

The Best First Book Award is sponsored by Mātātuhi Foundation.

Khadro Mohamed’s We’re All Made of Lightning takes us to distant lands, Egypt and Somalia, in heightened sensory language as she grieves for her homeland. Heart-breaking vulnerability and anger are revealed after a man had taken a knife and sliced straight through the sky on the March 15 attacks. Time, memory, dreams and reality are fluid and woven into lyrical poems and prose poems that consider what she would take if she were to go back to where she came from.