Mohamed Hassan’s National Anthem is a layered, politically charged collection that moves between lyric intimacy and cultural critique with clarity and force. Structured around refrains of migration, loss, racialisation, and belonging, the poems shift across geographies—from Aotearoa to Cairo to Istanbul—interrogating identity in the wake of empire, terrorism, and assimilation. With tonal dexterity and narrative precision, Hassan dissects the personal impacts of structural violence while preserving a grounded lyric voice. This is a work attentive to grief, satire, inheritance, and the quiet weight of diasporic memory.
 
PRAISE for National Anthem:
At once visceral and precise, it propels you forward, forward, like a great story teller in a hushed room.
— John Campbell
 
Mohamed Hassan writes from a space that nobody else stands in; a space borne of deep understanding and lived experience.
— Tusiata Avia
 
Mohamed’s writing has opened my eyes to the extraordinary power of slam poetry.
— Lynda Chanwai-Earle
 
ABOUT Mohamed Hassan:
Mohamed Hassan is an award-winning journalist and author from Auckland and Cairo whose poetry is taught in schools internationally. He was the 2015 New Zealand National Poetry Slam Champion and placed second at the 2021 UK National Slam. His essay collection How To Be A Bad Muslim (Penguin, 2022) was nominated for a National Heritage Award, and his Sky TV comedy series Miles From Nowhere was released in 2024 to critical acclaim. He dreams about the Nile.