HOMES
Author: Moheb Soliman
Publisher: Coffee House Press (2021)
Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior: HOMES. Moheb Soliman traces the coasts of the Great Lakes region with poems, exploring the nature of belonging in relation to land and the formation of identity along borders.
Moheb Soliman’s HOMES maps the shoreline of the Great Lakes from the rocky cliffs of Duluth, Minnesota, to the spray of Niagara Falls and back again. This poetic travelogue offers an intimate perspective on an immigrant experience as Soliman drives his Corolla past exquisite vistas and abandoned mines, through tourist towns and midwestern suburbs, searching for a place to claim as home. Against the backdrop of environmental destruction and a history of colonial oppression, the vitality of Soliman’s language brings a bold ecopoetic lens to bear on the relationship between transience and belonging in the world’s largest, most porous borderland.