70,000: Poems

A powerful act of remembrance and resistance, 70,000 transforms cultural erasure into an archive of grief, memory, and hope.

70,000 is a visceral and inventive poetry collection inspired by the removal of approximately 70,000 books from Palestinian homes and private libraries before and during the events of 1948. Of those books, most have not been returned; about 6,000 remain housed in Israeli national collections, where they are largely inaccessible to Palestinians.

In response to this loss of cultural and intellectual heritage, Lenna Jawdat began handwriting the numbers one to 70,000, choosing to imagine each number as a book. Trained as a trauma therapist, she documented the emotional and physical experience of this ritual, tracing the grief, reverence, and endurance that surfaced through the process. This full-color book unfolds through three interwoven threads: the numbers themselves, reflections on the act of writing, and a personal and familial poetic narrative expressed in both image and verse. Together, they form a fragmented yet powerful archive--blending poetry, memoir, maps, documents, and collage.

70,000 is an embodied meditation on cultural displacement, memory, and resilience. What begins as a personal act of witnessing becomes a collective gesture toward remembrance, continuity, and the possibility of healing.

Author: Lenna Jawdat
Publisher: Central Avenue Poetry
Published: 07/07/2026
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.20h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781771684545

About the Author
Lenna Jawdat is a poet, writer, and psychotherapist of Palestinian and Iraqi descent. Her writing, which explores trauma, identity and resilience, has appeared in journals such as Poet Lore, The Margins, Passenger's Journal, Rogue Agent, among others, and in the 2025 Haymarket Anthology Heaven Looks Like Us. She was a 2021 Best of the Net nominee for her poem "Ode to the Psoas," a 2022 Sundress Academy for the Arts summer resident, and has attended Tin House Workshop for poetry and creative nonfiction. She is also co-organizer of the poetry vigil series In Water and Light. Lenna received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in May 2024. She lives in DC with her partner and two cats.