First Matter Press

It’s release day for first you must destroy the world by Claudia Saleeby Savage! Available now at Bookshop.org and major online book retailers. If you supported this author with a preorder, deliveries are in process now! Cover art by Pearlyn Tan.
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first you must destroy the world is a searing poetic reckoning, where ancestral memory and political rupture converge in forms that gleam and stagger. Claudia Saleeby Savage draws from Arab poetics, erasure, and theatrical invocation to confront war, exile, motherhood, and erotic survival. These poems speak through rithā and ghazal, through absences carved by grief, and densities charged with longing. The story rings clear but never sacrifices the mysticism that lets poetry sing. In a voice both intimate and immense, Saleeby Savage rebuilds a war-torn and tender lyric terrain where personal and collective losses collide—and something sacred floats in the wreckage.
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Claudia Saleeby Savage is an Arab American poet, essayist, and mama with Multiple Sclerosis whose writing and performance explores displacement and the landscape of the body and has been featured in print, on stage, and in galleries throughout the country. She is the author of first you must destroy the world (First Matter Press, fall 2025), metal used for beauty alone (from The Poetry Box for print + voice), Bruising Continents (Spuyten Duyvil), and The Last One Eaten: A Maligned Vegetable’s History, with recent print work in Poetry Northwest, Ni**od, About Place, and River Teeth.
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First Matter Press is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. This literary arts project is supported by Regional Arts and Culture, The City of Portland’s Office of Arts & Culture, Oregon Cultural Trust, and Multnomah County Cultural Coalition.