Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine is a profound work of grace and solidarity, rooted in a hard-earned understanding of colonialism’s insatiable appetite. What Smokii Sumac has done, over the course of 100 searing, open-hearted poems, is give voice to the immeasurable grief of bearing witness to genocide – the overwhelming magnitude of it, colliding with a knowledge that this has happened before, that there is an age-old methodology to the act of endless taking. I am so grateful for this work, for this beautiful, honest reminder that, whatever power empires wield, we have what it can never take. We have one another.

Smokii Sumac (they/he) is a Ktunaxa two-spirit poet and emerging playwright. Their first book, you are enough: love poems for the end of the world won an Indigenous Voices Award. Indigenous sovereignty and centring our own knowledges is deeply important to Smokii’s creative work. He believes in the power of storytelling and has featured Indigenous writers and musicians on The ʔasqanaki Podcast, a limited podcast series that Smokii created and hosts. Their first play, Seven and One Heart, was workshopped in Montreal and developed in Toronto during the 2024 Weesageechak Begins to Dance festival. Smokii will be also releasing a Canada Council–funded spoken word album in spring 2025. Smokii is happy to live in his home territories of ʔamakʔis Ktunaxa, near the banks of the Kootenay River, with his husband, their cats, chicken, and a “big ole rez dog” named Kootenay Lou.

Zaynab Mohammed is a Performance Poet and Multi-Disciplinary Artist.