The Washington Post writes that The Leaving is “poignant and valuable.” Read the rest of the review of my chapbook and the others in the New Generation African Poets series here.
Author: Hope Wabuke
New Review of Movement No.1: Trains at The The Poetry Journal
Many thanks to The The Poetry Journal’s Jennifer MacBain-Stephens for this lovely new review of Movement No.1: Trains. Writes The The Poetry Journal:
“Using fluid language and an almost dream-like tone, Wabuke gives us glimpses of humanity’s core like spying on a commuting passenger through the windows of a subway car: intense yet indirect, witnessing a presence briefly…Like a mystical living force the train gives birth to shadow and light. Turning corners unseen, making noise, consuming space. We read these poems as blurry–eyed infants seeking out black and white shapes, alternately lulled and startled by Wabuke’s insightful words and descriptions.”
Read more here.
New Poem in Ruminate Literary Journal
Ruminate Magazine has been publishing vital, gorgeous writing for a decade. I am extremely honored that they asked me to contribute two poems for their tenth anniversary issue. Read more here.
New Poem at Salamander Literary Journal
I am honored to have a poem in the latest issue of Salamander Literary Journal. Go here to read.
The Leaving Preview
A preview for my forthcoming chapbook The Leaving, published by Akashic Press as part of Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani’s New Generation African Poetry Series is now viewable on the African Poetry Book Fund site. It is an honor to be selected for this series along with seven other wonderful poets. It is particularly special because Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani are two writers whose work I have long admired. The artwork is by the talented Victor Ehikhamenor.
Writes poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley in her introduction to my chapbook:
Hope Wabuke’s The Leaving is a powerful examination of the African experience through the eyes of a new generation of African women poets living in the Diaspora. With her carefully arranged lyrical verse in vivid images, she tells the story of her life as a child, born in exile, and forced to live an exiled existence against the backdrop of biblical images of another exiled people. As if these were the stories again of the exodus of God’s people from slavery in search of the promised land, her strong, sometimes narrative voice is both haunting and engaging.
Movement No.1: Trains Featured in As It Ought To Be
Many thanks to Sivan Butler-Rotholz for featuring Movement No:1 Trains in her poetry series As It Ought To Be. Writes Ms. Butler-Rotholz:
Part train ride, part memory, Movement No. 1: Trains takes the reader on a journey through which narrative blends with past, history is distorted by the present, and the tracks of the mind become one with the train lines of the New York subway system. Disjointed in a halting motion that mirrors the jerky movements of an underground train, the sway and lurch of this collection is tempered by moments of clarity and thoughtful reflection: “she / imagines the sound she hears is breathing;” “it is only when she thinks of him that her body becomes soft;” “she / would move her body in tiny circles of his rhythm.”
Read more here.
Movement No. 1: Trains Featured in New Books in Poetry
New Books in Poetry profiles my chapbook Movement No.1: Trains today. Many thanks to Jen Fitzgerald, a lovely host and astute interviewer. Read more here.
Review of Movement No.1: Trains at Straightforward Poetry
The lovely Lindsey Lewis Smithson at Straightforward Poetry has written a nice review of my chapbook Movement No.1: Trains. From her review:
The sixth poem in the collection reflects the unusual way time passes in a subway, saying “knowing the movement of time by the flow and ebb of crowds.” This is really one of those great moments where, as a writer, you wish you had written that.
Read the rest of the review here.
New Poem at Lit Hub
The brilliant Zinzi Clemmons curated a special series over at Lit Hub reflecting on Ferguson and #Blacklivesmatter one year after Mike Brown’s death. I am incredibly honored they asked me to contribute a poem alongside Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Angela Flournoy, Kiese Laymon, Rion Amilcar Scott, Metta Sama, Yahdon Israel, Sarah Labrie, Khadijah Queen, Danielle Evans, Morgan Parker, and Roger Reeves. My poem, “Slow Dance, With Bullet, is here.
