Border Lines

Book excerpt: In this remarkable collection—the first of its kind—poets from around the world give eloquent voice to the trials, hopes, rewards, and losses of the experience of migration. Each year, millions join the ranks of intrepid migrants who have reshaped societies throughout history. The movement of peoples across borders—whether forcible, as with the Middle Passage and the Trail of Tears, or voluntary, as with the great migrations from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the United States and Western Europe—brings with it emotional and psychological dislocations. More recently, African and Middle Eastern peoples have risked their lives to reach safety in Europe, while Central Americans have fled north. Whatever their circumstances, these travelers share the challenge of adapting to being strangers in a strange land. Border Lines brings together more than a hundred poets representing more than sixty nationalities, including Mahmoud Darwish, Czeslaw Milosz, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ruth Padel, Warsan Shire, Derek Walcott, and Ocean Vuong. Their poems offer moving stories of displacement and new beginnings in such places as France, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A monument to courage and resilience, Border Lines offers an intimate and uniquely global view of the experience of immigrants in our rapidly changing world.