We are all expanses of land and sea. The land and the sea are all of us. The sea divides us but also brings us together, just as the land does. The sea is a faultline - dangerous, unknowable - but also known; a hand that extends itself and holds us all in its embrace. The water carries us and heals us. It also overcomes us, traps us, and submerges us. We build from the land and like the sea eat from it, but we are also broken in pieces for it and by it. We come from the land and the sea and return to them.

This collection of poetic conversations begins on the land and sea; on what connects and divides us. In the understated and exquisite treasury of poems, The Shadow by Ahmed Miqdad and John P. Portelli, we find a conversation between two poets across one sea. Portelli is trapped in his cancer-ravaged but unbeaten body in Malta, where frenzied undercurrents cut at the land differently. Miqdad is trapped in Palestine, where death corners him and consumes him, his family, friends, colleagues, and fellow Palestinians daily, fleeing its devastated streets towards endless man-made anguish.

Death in Palestine is on the streets ('Eid in Gaza'), at the kitchen table, in tilted tents on blood-stained sand ('They Told Us To Leave'); on hospital beds and school desks. Death is still in nappies, in cradles with a mother hovering overhead in the shrillest of calls, trying, futile, to chase death away as it mercilessly occupies little expanses of land and sea ('The Palestinian Mother'). The mother clutches at her full breasts, starving in every possible sense of the word but remaining a steadfast life source.

Both poets are facing death because of violent sickness, broadly understood - inside their bodies and surrounding them - both looking into its eyes, through screens in hand or holding it his arms. Yet, these conversations are not filled with enmity or hate but with dreams of peace and a return to the joy of the mundane, reminding us that death has no limit except when faced with enduring hope.

In bearing witness through these poems, readers are brought into conversations between themselves, with themselves, with the land, the sea, and the sky; with the streets and the trees, with hope itself. Everywhere the reader turns, she finds deep sorrow and boundless loss ('Impossible Question').  The reader follows the poets' pens as they etch their names on their shrines ('Write on my Shrine') but still clasp fingers with longing for peace ('The White Visitor'). Words guide the reader into an undying devotion to the land: a ripe hope that sits waiting on olive branches, even if irrigated by blood and contaminated water ('Hymns of Peace').

Each poem is a story of many universes torn apart by guilt, decay and destruction. But, even then, love remains like water, shapeshifting as it fights to exist ('The Soul of My Soul'; 'In Memory of Your Soulful Soul'). Every word in every poem is an act of resistance that stands against death with its eye firmly towards freedom; freedom, like a kite, thrashes violently against the wind, evading the bullets ahead ('Phoenix-like Kite') until it eventually returns to the land and sea.

In these poems, hope is the last (wo)man standing; and hope never yields. A lesson for us all, irrespective of who we are and where we turn this stunning collection's pages.

All proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to Gaza.

Jenny Orlando-Salling is a PhD Fellow at the University of Copenhagen.