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January 23, 2019
 

Half Girl, Then Elegy

 
Omotara James
James reads "Half Girl, Then Elegy."

About This Poem

 

“As I go along my daily business of being a woman, I continue to be surprised by how the world defines me: by what I am no longer. From a position of transitional and unfixed womanhood, I was drawn to the metaphorical conceit of a great fall. The chosen image of the sky feels more appropriate than say, a rabbit hole, because girlhood is a pilgrimage we make in the open. Maybe the poem works to challenge the concept that girlhood is finite. Maybe it can’t. The rhythm of the poem attempts to capture this slippage while turning on the homonymy of have and halve. For me, one of the surprises of this poem is the interrogation between possession of and division from the self.”
Omotara James

 

Omotara James is the author of Daughter Tongue (Akashic Books, 2018), selected for the New Generation African Poets Box Set by the African Poetry Book Fund. Recipient of the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, she is an editor and teacher of poetry and lives in New York City.

Poetry by James

 

Daughter Tongue

(Akashic Books, 2018)

"Pain Scale" by Catherine Barnett

read-more

"Conversation with Phillis Wheatley #2" by Tiana Clark

read-more

"Oughta Be a Woman" by June Jordan

read-more

January Guest Editor: TC Tolbert

 

Thanks to TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania (Ahsahta Press, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a Q&A with Tolbert about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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