Edmund de Waal's Library of Sanctuary
Explore the titles that make up Edmund de Waal’s Library of Sanctuary, a selection of poetry by writers in the United States who tell stories of migration and displacement, often their own. Many of these texts are in translation; they embody the constant movement of both language and people across borders.
Learn more about the exhibition, eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington
Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things, 2015
Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, 2022
Abayomi Animashaun (ed.), Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America, 2015
Abbas Kiarostami, In the Shadow of Trees: The Collected Poetry of Abbas Kiarostami, 2020
Agha Shahid Ali, Rooms Are Never Finished: Poems, 2003
Agha Shahid Ali, A Nostalgist’s Map of America:, 2013
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lucky Fish, 2011
Ajibola Tolase, 2000 Blacks, 2024
Amy Uyematsu, That Blue Trickster Time, 2022
Anita Endrezze, Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon, 2000
Barbara Jane Reyes, Diwata, 2010
Bei Dao, The August Sleepwalker, 1990
Bei Dao, Forms of Distance, 1995
Bei Dao, The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poem, 2010
Bei Dao, Sidetracks, 2024
Bertolt Brecht, Selected Poems: Bertolt Brecht, 1971
Brandon Som, Tripas, 2023
Brandy Nālani McDougall, Āina Hānau / Birth Land, 2023
Carolina Ebeid, You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior, 2016
Casandra Lopez, Brother Bullet, 2019
Cathy Linh Che, Split, 2014
Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence: Poems, 2023
Charles Simic (foreword), American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans, 2013
Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, 2017
Chiwan Choi, The Flood, 2010
Cindi Alvitre, Waa’aka’: The Bird Who Fell in Love with the Sun, 2020
Cindy Juyoung Ok, Ward Toward, 2024
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric, 2014
Cynthia Dewi Oka, A Tinderbox in Three Acts, 2022
Cynthia Guardado, Cenizas: Poems, 2022
David Campos, American Quasar, 2021
Dean Kostos, ed., Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry, 2008
Deborah Miranda, Raised by Humans: Poems, 2015
Deema K. Shehabi, Thirteen Departures from the Moon, 2011
Denise Low, Mélange Block, 2014
Denise Low, House of Grace, House of Blood, 2024
Desiree C. Bailey, What Noise Against the Cane, 2021
Diane Glancy, Primer of the Obsolete, 2004
Diane Glancy, Offering: Poetry & Prose, 1989
Diego Báez, Yaguareté White, 2024
Don Mee Choi, Hardly War, 2016
Don Mee Choi, DMZ Colony, 2020
Don Mee Choi, Mirror Nation, 2024
Dunya Mikhail, The Iraqi Nights, 2014
Dunya Mikhail, Tablets: Secrets of the Clay, 2024
ed. Charles Egan, Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945, 2020
ed. Kurt Schweigman and Lucille Lang Day, Red Indian Road West, 2016
ed. Leah Silveius and Lee Herrick, The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit, 2020
Eduardo C. Corral, Slow Lightning, 2012
Elisa Gonzalez, Grand Tour, 2024
Elizabeth Torres, Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes, 2023
Etel Adnan, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country, 2005
Etel Adnan, Sea & Fog, 2012
Etel Adnan, The Arab Apocalypse, 1989
Etheridge Knight, The Essential Etheridge Knight, 1986
Evan Calbi, ed. Paul Vangelisti, L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing 1932-1998, 1999
Facundo Bernal, A Stab in the Dark/Palos de ciego, 2019
Fady Joudah, The Earth in the Attic, 2008
Francisco X. Alarcón, From the Other Side of Night/Del Otro Lado De LA Noche: New and Selected Poems, 2002
Ghassan Zaqtan, The Silence That Remains: Selected Poems, 2017
Gladys Cardiff, To Frighten A Storm, 1976
Ha Jin, Between Silences: A Voice from China, 1990
Hala Alyan, Atrium, 2012
Hala Alyan, Hijra, 2016
Hayan Charara, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, 2022
Hazem Fahmy, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo, 2022
J. Mae Barizo, The Cumulus Effect, 2015
J. Mae Barizo, Tender Machines, 2023
Janice Mirikitani, Awake in the River and Shedding Silence, 2022
Janine Joseph, Driving without a License, 2016
Javier Zamora, Unaccompanied, 2017
Jennifer Gillan, Maria Gillan, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, 1994
Jenny Xie, Eye Level, 2018
Joan Naviyuk Kane, Milk Black Carbon, 2017
Joan Naviyuk Kane, Dark Traffic, 2021
Jose Garcia Villa, Doveglion: Collected Poems, 2008
Joseph Brodsky, Urania: Selected Poems 1965–1985, 1997
Joseph Brodsky, Selected Poems: 1968-1996, 2020
Joy Harjo, Secrets from the Centre of the World, 1989
Juan Felipe Herrera, Every Day We Get More Illegal, 2020
Juan Felipe Herrera, Akrílica, 0
Juliana Chang, ed., Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Poetry, 1892-1970, 1998
Kamelya Omayma Youssef, A book with a hole in it, 2022
Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell, 2021
Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, 2017
Khaled Mattawa, Mare Nostrum, 2019
Khaled Mattawa, Zodiac of Echoes, 2003
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
Kim Hyesoon, Poor Love Machine, 2016
Kim Hyesoon, Autobiography of Death, 2018
Kimberly Blaeser, Ancient Light, 2024
Lan P. Duong, Nothing Follows, 2023
Layli Long Soldier, Whereas: Poems, 2017
Lee Herrick, This Many Miles from Desire, 2007
Lee Herrick, In Praise of Late Wonder, 2024
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Something about Living, 2024
Leo Romero, Trees Dream of Water, 2015
Li-Young Lee, Rose, 1986
Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You, 1990
Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes, 2009
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Emplumada, 1981
Lorna Dee Cervantes, Drive : the first quartet, 2006
Lucha Corpi, Palabras de mediodia/Noon Words, 1980
Lucha Corpi, Variaciones sobre una tempestad/Variations on a Storm, 1990
Luis Javier Rodriguez, The Concrete River, 1995
Mahmoud Darwish, The Butterfly’s Burden, 2007
Majid Naficy, Muddy Shoes, 1999
Majid Naficy, Father & Son, 2003
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Cenzontle, 2018
Margaret Walker, For My People, 2019
Martín Espada, Floaters: Poems, 2021
Mary-Alice Daniel, Mass for Shut-Ins, 2023
Maurice Kilwein Guevara, Poems Of The River Spirit, 1996
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Empathy, 2020
Mitsuye Yamada, Camp notes and other writings, 1992
Mohja Kahf, Hagar Poems, 2016
Mohsen Emadi, Standing on Earth, 2016
Mosab Abu Toha, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, 2022
Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise, 2024
Naomi Shihab Nye, Red Suitcase, 1994
Naomi Shihab Nye, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, 2005
Natalie Handal, The Republics, 2015
Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard, 2007
Nathan Xavier Osorio, Querida, 2024
Nick Carbó, ed., Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry, 1995
Novica Tadić, Dark Things, 2009
Octavio Quintanilla, Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, 2025
Osama Alomar, Fullblood Arabian, 2014
Paul Tran, All the Flowers Kneeling, 2022
Peter Balakian, June-Tree-New and Selected-Poems-1974-2000, 2004
Peter Balakian, Ozone Journal, 2015
Philip Levine, What Work Is: Poems, 1992
Prageeta Sharma, nfamous Landscapes, 2007
Richard Blanco, City of a Hundred Fires, 1998
Richard Blanco, Matters of the Sea / Cosas del mar, 2015
Rio Cortez, Golden Ax, 2022
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus, 2015
Robin Coste Lewis, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, 2022
Roger Reeves, Best Barbarian, 2023
Roque Dalton, Small Hours of the Night, 1996
Sadakichi Hartmann, Collected Poems, 1886-1944, 2016
Safia Elhillo, The January Children, 2017
Shao Wei, Pulling A Dragon’s Teeth, 2003
Sherwin Bitsui, Shapeshift, 2003
Sholeh Wolpé, Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse, 2022
Simon J. Ortiz, Woven Stone, 1992
Sinan Antoon, Postcards from the Underworld, 2023
Sinan Antoon, The Baghdad Blues, 2007
Soledad Caballero, I Was A Bell, 2021
Solmaz Sharif, Look, 2016
Solmaz Sharif, Customs, 2022
Sun Yung Shin, Unbearable Splendour, 2016
Sun Yung Shin, The Wet Hex, 2022
Terrance Hayes, Wind in a Box, 2006
Threa Almontaser, The Wild Fox of Yemen, 2021
traci kato-kiriyama, Navigating With(out) Instruments, 2021
Tracy K. Smith, Wade in the Water, 2018
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, My Rice Tastes Like the Lake, 2011
Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, In the Absent Everyday, 2005
Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears, 2008
Valzhyna Mort, Music for the Dead and Resurrected, 2021
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Beast Meridian, 2017
Vasko Popa, Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems, 1979
Veronica Golos, Vocabulary of Silence, 2011
Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, despegue
Victoria Chang, Barbie Chang, 2017
Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything, 2022
Vijay Seshadri, 3 Sections, 2013
Virgil Suarez, 90 Miles, 2005
Wanda Coleman, Ostinato Vamps, 2003
Wanda Coleman, ed. Terrance Hayes, Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems, 2021
Will Alexander, Refractive Africa: Ballet of the Forgotten, 2022
William Archila, The Art of Exile, 2009
Yanyi, The Year of Blue Water, 2019
