#omotara james

[geryone]

Daughter Tongue, Omotara James

#quotes #quote #poem #poetry #Omotara James #id in alt text

[putoutallthestars]

🌰🌰 🍓🍓 🍒🍒 red is the colour (or so they say).

#selfie #cleopatra and frankenstein #coco mellors #red #autumn vibes #cozy times #omotara james #fruit #cherry red #poetry #walnuts #golden brown #hollow #nice to meet you #reading #strawberry red #prelude #hello

[catella-ars]

Found this in a poetry book the other day and instantly fell in love.

#audio #poetry #half girl then elegy #omotara james #i messed up a little but here it is #voice acting #let's read

[generouswindow]

My mother’s nerves are shot—

by OMOTARA JAMES

a nerve is a shot. A shot is an arch. My mother is an archer. The archer breaks the dead branch dead. Dead branches rot. Rot from the bark. My mother’s nerves bark: shot through loss. Death peels her nerves. Death is an archer. Death shoots rot: just misses her. I see her tremble. Moss greens her bark. Greens where she trembles. Where there was death, fruit grows. The fruits of death. Fruits moss the branches through the blinds where she trembles still.

#of ruin #omotara james #i like to call things as they are

[llovelymoonn]

favourite poems of december

torrin a. greathouse ekphrasis on nude selfie as portrait of saint sebastian

snehal vadher hello flowers and cigarettes

robert pinsky death and the powers: a robot pageant

wendy barker taking a language

cindy juyoung ok terms and conditions

carl phillips this far in

christian wiman hard night: “the ice storm”

cathy linh che split: “the german word for dream is traume”

linda hogan when the body

david trinidad the late show: “a regret”

omotara james my mother’s nerves are shot--

marie howe the good thief: “death, the last visit”

kaveh akbar portrait of the alcoholic floating in space with severed umbilicus

donald britton in the empire of the air: “italy”

snehal vadher figures in a windswept language

jane wong after preparing the alter, the ghosts feast feverishly

ofelia zepeda ocean power: “deer dance exhibition”

lucille clifton good woman: poems and a memoir, 1969-1980: “the lost baby poem”

emily pérez dworzec

ouyang jianghe mother, kitchen (tr. austin woerner)

cathy linh che i walked through the trees, mourning

sam willets tourist

ed bok lee whorled: “if in america”

dan gerber marriage

matthew rohrer poem written with issa [“a friend emails”]

richard siken crush: “litany in which certain things are crossed out”

april bernard anger

claudia rankine citizen: “you are in the dark, in the car...”

barbara hamby letter to a lost friend

joy harjo everybody has a heartache: a blues

cathy linh che go forget your father

kofi

#tbr list #poem #poems #poetry #poetry list #cathy linh che #joy harjo #barbara hamby #claudia rankine #april bernard #richard siken #matthew rohrer #dan gerber #ed bok lee #sam willets #ouyang jianghe #emily perez #emily pérez #lucille clifton #ofelia zepeda #jane wong #snehal vadher #donald britton #kaveh akbar #marie howe #omotara james #david trinidad #linda hogan #christian wiman #carl phillips

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

One of my favorite poetry teachers, Jericho Brown, says something about shame that I've never forgotten, which is when we engage with shame, we are believing the lies that people tell us about ourselves. And there is nothing more worth the risk of telling your story than to eradicate that shame, to speak back to it and begin to claim radical love.

Omotara James, in an interview with Leila Fadel, 21 February, 2024. NPR's "Morning Edition."

Full transcript now up at the following link:

#author interview #new book: poetry #queer represetation #fat representation #Pride #anti-shame #radical love #NPR morning edition

[vulnerableagendaofdeath]

"He looks through the wound of my life like it's light. So I let him."

—Omotara James, from "Pier 52"

#dark academia #dark acadamia quotes #literature quotes #dark academism #light acamedia #poetry #literature #poem #modern literature #lines #classic literature #classic academia #chaotic academia #writing #wordporn #spilled ink #spilled writing #love #lit #dark acadamia aesthetic #dark acamedia #omotara james #love poem #romanticism #romantic #romantic literature #romantic academia #literary #light academia #pier 52

[bookclub4m]

30 Recent Poetry Collections by BIPOC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

This booklist features books from BIPOC poets published in the past three years.

Chrome Valley by Mahogany L. Browne

Feast by Ina Cariño

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen

Girls That Never Die: Poems by Safia Elhillo

Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi

I Do Everything I'm Told by Megan Fernandes

Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry edited by Joy Harjo

Song of my Softening by Omotara James

Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead / Mamaht́wisiwin, Pakos̊yimow, Nikihci-́niskot́ṕn : Poems by Wanda John-Kehewin

Burning Like Her Own Planet by Vandana Khanna

Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi

Bianca by Eugenia Leigh

Finna by Nate Marshall

Slam Coalkan Performance Poetry: The Condor and the Eagle Meet edited by Jennifer Murrin

God Themselves by Jae Nichelle

You Are Only Just Beginning: Lessons for the Journey Ahead by Morgan Harper Nichols

I’m Always So Serious by Karisma Price

Homie by Danez Smith

Blood Snow by dg nanouk okpik

Promises of Gold/Promesas de Oro by José Olivarez with translation by David Ruano

That Was Now, This is Then by Vijay Seshadri

it was never going to be okay by jaye simpson

Dark Testament by Crystal Simone Smith

Unshuttered: Poems by Patricia Smith

Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom

Femme in Public by Alok Vaid-Menon

Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

Find Her. Keep Her. by Renaada Williams

Rupture Tense by Jenny Xie

From From by Monica Youn

#poetry #genres #booklists

[lcthescribe]

#donate #godundme #help others #give

[typewriter-worries]

The two collections that come out in the next year that I’m super excited for are Song of My Softening by Omotara James and Promises of Gold by José Olivarez!!

Adding Promises of Gold right now. Citizen Illegal was easily one of my favorite reads last year; can't wait to having something break my heart the way Not-Love is a Season did <3

I haven't read Omotara James yet but I trust your taste so I'm off to fix that.

#sooooo excited for josé olivarez it's not even funny #hope the world is being kind to you geryone <3

[geryone]

Daughter Tongue, Omotara James

#quotes #quote #poetry #poem #omotara james #id in alt text

[apollosms4nger]

"Sometimes your language reminds you from where and whom you hail. Other times, it confronts you with it."

—Omotara James

#apollo quotes #poetry #poetry recs #poetry reading #quotes #poetry quotes #dark academia #dark acadamia quotes #dark acadamia aesthetic #light academia #light acadamia aesthetic #light academia quotes #study blog #studyblr #language #literature

[the-healing-words]

"He looks through the wound of my life like it's light. So I let him ."

- Omotara James, from "Pier 52"

[poeticpicturism]

Halve me like a walnut

Pry the part of me that is hollow

From the part that yields fruit.

- omotara james

[the-enchantedboy]

"He looks through the wound of my life like it's light. So I let him"

-Omotara James, from 'Pier 52'

.

[poetryfoundation-potd]

Autobiography of Thud

By Omotara James

After Donika Kelly

You live in Elmont, New York,

in a small house with a big yard

and gate that doesn’t lock.

Have a best friend

with shiny black hair

called Clarissa, who shares everything

and might be the only person

to smile when she sees you.

You play at her house after school.

She is not as brown or round,

but that doesn’t make her more or less

beautiful than you, just likable.

You take the bus to school Mondays–Fridays,

where you almost always share a seat twice

the width of your womanly hips, unless

someone is sick and no one wants the seat

next to you, where you practice how to leave

your body. You daydream

that your mum doesn’t have to work

and sometimes you’re sure you see her

powder blue car trailing the bus, just out the window.

You don’t wear glasses, but think they look smart.

Can still look people in the eye

when you speak and are spoken to.

Unsupervised adults, busy boys and girls

have things to say about your  figure, which

is the word men are most likely to use

when addressing a growing girl. Trauma

isn’t a word you’ve heard anywhere, including

the playground or the tele. Instead, you pick

up pretty junk, like muddy flower barrettes and strange coins.

Your pockets jangle on the bus home with your private

collection. You strew your loves with abandon

across the kitchen counter. Clarissa shines them,

placing them next to the repurposed tin can

on her dresser. Neither one of you knows the word altar

or wears the fancy barrettes to school.

Your mother works overnight. Your father too.

But his Aramis follows her Opium parfum

like the sun does the moon. In the morning,

the near miss of his body seems easier.

You roam like a buffalo through his possessions.

Spritz his cologne. Finger his ties. You could be anyone.

Mom shouts the warning for the bus. Reality

returns to the tongue like dry cud. You trot

through the kitchen to graze in peace, where

you find a different, familiar island gyal.

Every six months, maybe, dad brings one in need

of work before she travels back home. They

watch you and your brother. Closely. Discern that

Trinidad is not   your home. You awake to girls

in the shape of women towering over you.

They are as mean as square-cut glass. Get up

for school. They remind you how you are American,

which you learn is a slur for fat. They leave.

They return six months later with mangos,

black rum cake and small parcels. They teach you

fatty-fatty boom-boom is the sound you make

when you walk, when you smile or enter

a room:   fatty-fatty boom-boom.

You don’t know how to fight,

but have instincts to protect your brother

against people he won’t remember.

You love him now. Your secret is

that you have usurped his real mother. You play

Candy Land and Monopoly. Your brother

loves money so much that you trade him

pink and blue bills for Halloween candy.

You are aware you like food more

than you’re supposed to. You unwrap the candy

beneath your pillow so the sound doesn’t carry.

It’s summer, finally! You’re officially a second grader.

The first day at camp, your training bra is discovered

by Jessica Rose in the locker room.

Who accuses you of weighing 100 pounds.

Who washes her hair every day,

and smells like flowers before they die.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159235/autobiography-of-thud

Audio Included

#poetry #poetry foundation #english #african american #Caribbean #fatphobia