Bad Diaspora Poems

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Tender, searing, satirical and political, Bad Diaspora Poems is a dazzling and much-awaited debut collection from a remarkable and singular poetic voice Tender, searing, satirical and political, Bad Diaspora Poems is a dazzling and much-awaited debut collection from a remarkable and singular poetic voice Yes, being the one who survived, the one who made it to this side, is a full-time job. But no one asked you to take it Diaspora is witnessing a murder without getting blood on your shirt. The definition of diaspora is the dispersion of people from their original homeland. But what does it mean to write diaspora poetry Momtaza Mehri's exhilarating debut collection poses this question, spanning the waves of movement to and from Somalia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, taking us from Mogadishu to Naples, Lampedusa to London. We arrive at the present day, where these inherited histories and silences have endured across generations. Mixing Mehri's own family's experience with the history and stories of many others, Bad Diaspora Poems confronts the ambivalent nature of speaking for those who have been left behind. We meet the poet, the immigrant, the exile, the refugee, the runaway, the working-class artist, the translator, and the diaspora kid attempting to transcend their cliched angst. Inhabiting the form of lyric, prose, erasures and text messages and taking place in living rooms and marketplaces, on buses and balconies, on transatlantic journeys and online, these are essential poems about our diasporic age.

Reviews

A poet like Momtaza Mehricomes comes only once in a generation. Mehri is a writer of refined insight, audacious imagination and artful technicality - a genius. Bad Diaspora Poem is a feat, its scope of movement both in time and geography is immense, you are swallowed into its voyage. This is an essential collection in the Black diasporic discourse. -- Caleb Femi, author of POOR
There's something arresting about Momtaza Mehri's multilingual verses. * Dazed's New Generation Poets *
One of 5 Somali-British Poets You Need To Know About * Buzzfeed *

Author Bio

Momtaza Mehri is an award-winning poet and essayist. She is a former Young People's Poet Laureate for London and winner of the 2019 Manchester Writing Prize. Her writing has featured in the Guardian, POETRY, Granta, Wasafiri, Bidoun, The White Review and on BBC Radio 4. She works across criticism, translation, anti-disciplinary research practices, education and radio.