Red Poetry Series
Description
The Red Poetry Series highlights work that lie at the intersection of poetry, prose, and advancing revolutionary goals.
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Written by Yahya Al Hamarna
ISBN-13: 9798295747380
42 pages
Publication Date: 11 August 2025
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From Gaza, Yahya Al Hamarna writes a defiant testament to memory, hope, and the unbreakable power of the human voice.
My Voice Cannot Be Bombed is a searing collection of poems written amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In his luminous debut, Yahya Al Hamarna documents the brutalities of war alongside the fragile rituals of everyday life—studying, walking to the park, reading poetry, preparing tea, mourning, surviving.
From the cramped intimacy of displacement tents to the imagined serenity of university lectures and Real Madrid matches, Al Hamarna crafts a poetics of survival: one that refuses despair and insists on the unconquerable dignity of the Palestinian people.
Through diaristic reflection, stark testimony, and vivid lyricism, Al Hamarna’s work resists the machinery of occupation with quiet force. With grace and fury, My Voice Cannot Be Bombed speaks from the rubble and into history.
Published as the third volume in Iskra Books’ Red Poetry Series, this poignant and timely volume is a testament to the enduring spirit of Palestinian resistance and the power of poetry and voice in the face of annihilation.
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Written by D. Musa Springer
ISBN-13: 9798295773341 (Softcover/Black & White)
ISBN-13: 9798240915499 (Hardcover/Color)
170 pages
Publication Date: 15 March 2024
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Alive and Paranoid is a monumental artistic and cultural achievement from Georgia-based worker, journalist, and organizer, D. Musa Springer. This truly beautiful work bridges poetry, photography, and avant-garde design in a way that portrays the timeless, suspended moments of the tireless revolutionary heart in a light that is at once familiar, personal, and poignant. With moving poetry and beautiful photography from cover to cover, Alive and Paranoid—the second book in Iskra Books' popular Red Poetry Series—feels sacred: a window into the personal, deeply reflective life of one of today's leading and most heartfelt poets.
Available as both a low-cost, black and white, softcover edition and as a full-color, resplendent hardcover, Alive and Paranoid is an essential creative work, sure to endure for decades to come.
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Written by Leon Benson
Forward by Derek R. Ford
ISBN-13: 9798295792892
78 pages
Publication Date: 8 March 2024
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Because of police and judicial misconduct, white supremacy, and the capitalist system overall, Leon Benson spent nearly 25 years incarcerated, 10 of which were spent in solitary confinement—globally recognized as a human rights violation—for a murder he did not commit. Then, on March 9, Benson was liberated from the notorious Pendleton prison in Indiana. Officially exonerated and his conviction overturned, Benson walked through the prison doors to a community that had been fighting for his release for years.
Released exactly one year after his liberation, Letters of Gratitude is centered around nine profound, punctual, and expansive dispatches Benson wrote from behind prison bars when his exoneration seemed increasingly likely and imminent. Each letter overflows with the reality of Ubuntu, an African philosophy based on collectivity rather than isolated individuality—and that guided African liberation struggles from Zimbabwe to Tanzania—that Benson came across during his in-depth studies of wide-ranging topics.
In addition to the nine letters that appear unaltered, included is a 2021 letter Benson wrote to the family of the man he was falsely imprisoned for murdering, a 2023 letter thanking the ongoing list of those who compose the we that is Benson, a preface to introduce the letters, and a foreword by his comrade Derek R. Ford that offers some personal, political, and historical context and suggests one way readers can engage with Benson’s texts: as a set of what Walter Rodney referred to as “groundings.” Each letter or each word, each fiber of each page, each thought of each reader; these are elements of the common unity that, if we organize and realize, will win a world where true freedom and justice prevail.