I cannot be good until you say it

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE The much-anticipated debut collection by the winner of the Outspoken Performance Poetry Prize: a tender meditation on queerness and Islam 'Dissolving whatever boundaries would wall us off from love, Ahsan finds a way to let it all be holy' Victoria Adukwei-Bulley 'When I speak of the word "sacred", Sanah Ahsan's I cannot be good until you say it will forever instantly spring to mind ... A masterpiece - an honour to have read this book, I am forever changed after reading its beauty' Nikita Gill 'Innovative and deeply compassionate ... multilingual verse suffused with a vital musicality and a palpable tenderness, Ahsan calls poetry into prayer and evokes a faith safe enough to be mothered by' Mary Jean Chan 'Dexterous, varied, erotic, filled with rage, worships and wonder ... I am electrified' Pádraig Ó Tuama 'Tensions of psychological drama, together with an induced sense of yearning.. what an artful and inspired set of poems' Anthony Anaxagorou 'Liberation is at the nucleus of every page of Sanah Ahsan's rousing debut ... Ahsan is doing liberation work, offering readers a prayer, a song, a hand to hold amidst the amidst' Kaveh Akbar 'A remarkable and transformative collection' Keith Jarrett 'A daring debut collection, which guides us through the complexities of just being' Yomi Sode 'Alive with a want and restlessness that remakes the "You" of desire - and faith - again and again' Will Harris 'A heart punching debut collection' Raymond Antrobus ______________________________________________ Intricately weaving Quranic verse, psychology, and the hip-hop soundtrack of their childhood, Sanah’s poems reach for divinity in the body; an archive that refuses erasure. These poems traverse unruly emotional and physical landscapes, Whiteness, islamophobia, homophobia, intergenerational suffering, and the politics of therapeutic processes. In these pages, belief and unbelief, goodness a