My Sneezes Are Perfect

By Rakhshan Rizwan, Yusuf Samee and Benjamin Phillips

What's your favourite food? Who's your best friend? Have you tried to grow a rock? Aren't beards weird? Did you ever move house and miss where you used to live? Didn't a lot change when the pandemic started?
My Sneezes Are Perfect is a collection of poems in the voice of a small boy who wants to tell you about all the things he's learning, all the time. During the book, he moves from the Netherlands to America and has to adjust to his new life there. Then Covid-19 hits and his world changes all over again...

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912915699

Rakhshan Rizwan

Rakhshan Rizwan works as an Acquisitions Editor. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Utrecht University. Her poetry pamphlet, Paisley (The Emma Press, 2017) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award and the Michael Marks Poetry Prize. Her collection of children’s poetry, My Sneezes are Perfect (The Emma Press, 2021) documents the difficulties of moving countries, and living through a pandemic from the perspective of a young child. Her book Kashmiri Life Narratives: Human Rights, Pleasure, and the Local Cosmopolitan (Routledge, 2020) looks at how Kashmiri authors use innovative languages of happiness to do human rights advocacy. Her writing has appeared in Aaduna, Nimrod, Postcolonial Text and Blue Lyra Review, among others. She is on the editorial team of the children’s poetry journal Tyger Tyger Magazine. She is from Lahore, Pakistan, has lived in Germany and the Netherlands, and currently lives in the Bay Area of North California, US.

Book preview

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POETRY PAMPHLETS FOR ADULTS

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how the first sparks became visible, by Simone Atangana Bekono

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THE EMMA PRESS

First published in the UK in 2021 by the Emma Press Ltd.

Poems © Rakhshan Rizwan and Yusuf Samee 2021.

Illustrations © Benjamin Phillips 2021.

All rights reserved.

The right of Rakhshan Rizwan, Yusuf Samee and Benjamin Phillips to be identified as the creators of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-912915-68-2

ePub ISBN 978-1-912915-69-9

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the UK by Imprint Digital, Exeter.

The Emma Press

theemmapress.com

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Jewellery Quarter,

Birmingham, UK

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Contents

Stinky Banana

The Perfect Sneeze

Burps and Farts

Rocks

Time Outs

Bedtime

Moving to America

Hatchetfish

Giant

Intruder Drill is Scary

Fossils

Bell Pepper

The Tooth Fairy Makes Mistakes

Vanilla Vla

Bacteria

Flossing

First Grade

School Attire

Trees

My Sister

Strawberry Guava

Potty Breaks

Squirrels

Dystopia

Propaganda

Self-driving Car

Yosemite

Bees

Watermelon Hat

The Dentist

Dandelions

Beards

Poop

Aphids

Frustration

Nothing

The Yellow Sky

My Best Friend

The Big Dig

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