Behind the Tree Backs investigates a poetics of remembrance through senses that hover just below and just above the skin. The text excavates war and displacement through a constellation of animate memories carved out of deep pleasure as well as brutality, the ancient and the institutional, the everyday and the geopolitical. The book insists on a poetics that recall through vibrating auratic fields, violence, love, and sexuality; these sensations tremble and cohere in a musical and tightly composed lyric.
Iman Mohammed was born in Baghdad, grew up in Stockholm, and lives in Malmö. She is a graduate of the Swedish writing programs at Biskops Arnö and HDK-Valand. She debuted in 2017 with the chapbook Fermata. Behind the Tree Backs is her first full-length collection of poems.