Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
The Work of Angels is a meditation on sex, the celestial, and the spectre of communism. These appear where history and subject don’t quite meet; here, the lover (a worker, child, philosopher of history, mystic-astronomer) speaks to her other through a language made possible by losses, thefts, and the wars that constitute politics. Desire—the etymology of which is something like of the stars—is inaugurated by these planetary negations, setting into orbit a conspiracy between romance and exploitation, mysticism and violence, prophecy and ordinary inertia.
Anisha Sankar is Chennai-born and Te Awakairangi-raised. She lives in Toronto, where she’s completing her PhD. She is a member of Al-Rifaq, a Pōneke-based collective that translates and publishes contemporary political analysis produced by the revolutionary currents of Palestine and the Arab world. With Emma Blackett, she is writing a book elaborating a Marxist and psychoanalytic theory of the subject. The Work of Angels is her first book of poetry.
“Like Clarice Lispector and Aimé Césaire before her, Anisha Sankar twirls history, myth, and ordinary relation into a shining wing that hovers above the void. Elegant, intelligent, and tender, this book does something that only poetry can do.”
—Sholto Buck, author of Light Film (Pilot Press, 2025)
The Work of Angels is a meditation on sex, the celestial, and the spectre of communism. These appear where history and subject don’t quite meet; here, the lover (a worker, child, philosopher of history, mystic-astronomer) speaks to her other through a language made possible by losses, thefts, and the wars that constitute politics. Desire—the etymology of which is something like of the stars—is inaugurated by these planetary negations, setting into orbit a conspiracy between romance and exploitation, mysticism and violence, prophecy and ordinary inertia.
Anisha Sankar is Chennai-born and Te Awakairangi-raised. She lives in Toronto, where she’s completing her PhD. She is a member of Al-Rifaq, a Pōneke-based collective that translates and publishes contemporary political analysis produced by the revolutionary currents of Palestine and the Arab world. With Emma Blackett, she is writing a book elaborating a Marxist and psychoanalytic theory of the subject. The Work of Angels is her first book of poetry.
“Like Clarice Lispector and Aimé Césaire before her, Anisha Sankar twirls history, myth, and ordinary relation into a shining wing that hovers above the void. Elegant, intelligent, and tender, this book does something that only poetry can do.”
—Sholto Buck, author of Light Film (Pilot Press, 2025)