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.
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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.
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.
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.
Best of the Net Award Nomination from NonBinary Review
Incredibly honored that the good folks at NonBinary Review have nominated my poem “listen” for a Best of the Net Award. Read more here.
The lovely Chioma Nkemdilim interviewed me for theThe African Book Review.
ABR: How did you develop an interest in writing poetry and where does your inspiration to write poems come from?
WABUKE: Poetry was my first love, but it took me a long, circular time to be strong in the work. I wrote my first poem when I was six. It was about an elephant named Elephy. More followed. Poetry was a sort of sanctuary for me. In my education, from kindergarten through senior year of high school, we only read white European and American writers, usually male, and finding Brooks and Giovanni and Lorde and Baldwin and Hughes and others gave me something that sustained me. I have played music for most of my whole life, and I was always attracted to the musicality of language. But I studied film and fiction writing in college and graduate school instead. The idea that you could get an MFA in poetry was beyond my comprehension at the time.
A few years ago, I returned to Los Angeles to spend time with my parents, who were both ill, and with my grandmother, visiting from Uganda. My grandmother was 96; I knew that might be the last time I saw her. I became pregnant and began to think even more about my body family—the growing of life brought up so many feelings and memories; it was a paradigm shift too, in terms of what I thought important, in my writing. My baby boy is probably my biggest inspiration. He opens up my world and makes it so much richer, so much more interesting and meaningful than I could have ever thought possible.
Read the rest of the interview here.
The lovely Geosi interviewed me for his book blog here.
Interview with 2015 Brunel University African Poetry Prize Shortlisted Writer
Brief Biography:
Born in exile to Ugandan refugees, Hope Wabuke is now a writer based in Southern California. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The North American Review, Kalyani Magazine, Fjords Literary Journal, Potluck Magazine, Ruminate Magazine, Salamander Journal, Literary Mama, Weave Magazine, Cease Cows, Split This Rock and Joint Literary. Her essays and criticism have been featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Gawker, The Root, Ms. Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, The Feminist Wire, Ozy, The Hairpin and The Daily Beast. Hope reviews books for the Kirkus Reviews and has won fellowships from The New York Times, Voices of Our Nations Foundation (VONA), and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women Writers. She holds degrees from Northwestern University and New York University. Hope is currently the media director for the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Follow her on Twitter @HopeWabuke.
Geosi Gyasi: Could we start with your poem, “Leviticus”? How did you come to write it?
Hope Wabuke: When I became pregnant with my baby boy, I began to think a lot about my personal and cultural history. I thought a lot about my parents, my grandparents–what it must have been like to be live through genocide, trying to keep your family safe. I began to remember things–some I think I had been told, some I don’t think I could possibly have known. When I talked to my mother, afterward, she said she hadn’t told them to me. Nor, of course, had my father. It was all very interesting to me, very pressing to understand. Scientists have proven that, when women are pregnant, the baby’s cells migrate into the mother’s blood, body and brain, and vice versa of course, permanently changing our bodies and psychology. So my mother’s experiences and unsaid memories were held inside me; my son’s as well. Mine inside him. It was then that I began to write the poems that form my current poetry manuscript, The Body Family, of which “Leviticus” is one. These poems explore my family’s escape from Idi Amin’s Ugandan genocide and the aftermath of healing in America. In it, I reclaim my womanhood, culture, and spirituality from a legacy of violence.
Read the rest of the interview here.
october
