Abimbola Kweku - Saltwater Demands A Psalm Poems - Paperback

Binding: Paperback
Description: In Ghana's Akan tradition on the eighth day of life a child is named according to the day of the week on which they were born. This marks their true birth. In Kweku Abimbola's rhapsodic debut the intimacy of this practice yields an intricately layered poetics of time and body based in Black possibility ancestry and joy. While odes and praise songs celebrate rituals of self - and collective - care of durags stank faces and dance Abimbola's elegies imagine alternate lives and afterlives for those slain by police returning to naming as a means of rebirth and reconnection following the lost understanding of time and space that accompanies Black death. Saltwater Demands a Psalm creates a cosmology in search of Black eternity governed by Adinkra symbols pictographs central to Ghanaian language and culture in their proverbial meanings and rooted in units of time created from the rhythms of Black life. These poems groove remix and recenter African language and spiritual practice to rejoice in liberation's struggles and triumphs. Abimbola's poetry invokes the ecstasy and sorrow of saying the names of the departed of seeing and being seen of being called and calling back.
Title: Saltwater Demands A Psalm Poems
Author(s): Abimbola Kweku
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Barcode: 9781644452271
Pages: 96 Pages
Language: English
Publication Date: 4/4/2023
Category: Poetry By Individual Poets