One of Book Riot's Must-Have New Poetry for Fall 2023
The remarkable debut collection by a young Nigerian queer poet.
"here / i am not his image / & i envy it / i shut my eyes against what is left / the crackling softness of life / like communion / desire is a marathon / a baton waiting for your grip / here / i am not running / neither is he / i sit with a man for the first time / & we talk about war . . ."
-FROM "BEAUTIFUL BOY WITH GARLANDS AROUND HIS WAIST"
In Gorgeous Display, by Nigerian poet Ugochukwu Damian Okpara, is a volume dedicated to the memory of those lost to anti-queer violence in Nigeria and elsewhere. In this first full-length collection of his work, Okpara examines queer male identity, effeminacy, and exile, offering meditations on desire and sanctuary, freedom and estrangement. Forty-three poems pierce familial relationships, safety, fear, and anxiety portrayed through the outward sign of hand tremors, queer lynching, survival, hope, the emptiness of exile, and reclamation of the self. Embracing the ephemeral and spiritual nature of physical beauty, Okpara also reveals the scars of queer displacement, illuminating the ways that leaving home is never quite the utopia one hopes for and how often the ache of abandonment can haunt a life lived in the present.
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Editions-Typ
Produkt-Hinweis
Maße
Höhe: 203 mm
Breite: 127 mm
Dicke: 4 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-5315-0460-1 (9781531504601)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Ugochukwu Damian Okpara is a Nigerian writer and poet. He is an alumnus of the SprinNG Fellowship and Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop. His works appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Masters Review, Lolwe, The Republic, 14 Poems, Ruminate, The Penn Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. He is the author of the poetry chapbook, I Know the Origin of My Tremor (Sundress Publications, 2021).
Beautiful Boy with Garlands around His Waist 1
What Is Left of Us Is Made Broken and Shy 2
In Which I Sit with My Father on a Threshold 3
We Are No Longer at the Threshold 4
In Which I Sit with My Mother 6
Portrait of a Boy in Gorgeous Display 7
We Recognize This Space and All the Promises It Never Held 8
Nervous Wound 10
Just in Case I Don't Come Home Tonight 11
Logan Theatre 12
Hand 13
To the Manual Parts of my Upper Limbs Distal to My Wrists 14
I Prefer the Safety of These Hands 15
If I Die, What Would My Family Write as My Biography? 16
Portrait of a Boy with Hands Helpless 18
Boy Meets Boy & This Isn't about Love 19
What I Know about Beauty 21
Duplex 23
Orbit 24
The Face of Memory Glitters with Hope 25
Notes on Desire 26
Host 28
Diary Entry 29
Leaving Sad Things Behind 31
What Escape These Hands Can Tell 33
That Night 34
Self-Portrait as White Spaces 35
In the History of Belonging 36
All My Friends Are Terrible Photographers 37
At a Queer Safe Space in Lagos 38
The Emptiness Born Out of Escape 39
Biafra War Song 41
Ars Exsilii 42
Peace Lilies 44
At the Airport Terminal 45
Joy for Yet Another Night 46
Exile Leaves You at the Foot of Desire 47
A Ritual about Home We've Come to Know 48
Survival 49
I Practice to Get Hold of Myself 51
I Have Been Thinking about Worship 52
Prodigal Son 54
A Ruined Candle Wax Still Breathes Itself into Shape 55
Acknowledgments 57
About the Author 58
