Portrait of Colossus
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€6.99
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Product details
- ISBN 9781905233618
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 28 Jan 2021
- Publisher: Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Portrait of Colossus is a searingly forthright début that navigates parenting, masculinity, racism and ambiguities of identity. It articulates, with skill and sly humour, the migrant experience from the perspective of the second generation, the ones who “know [England]/ more than everywhere else/ put together”. Brimming with vulnerability and pitched between the lilt of hooyo's admonitions and Ted Hughes' eye for the natural world, many of the poems reconcile disparate worlds, cultures and identities, firing them with the lyricism of Dawud's Psalms. Samatar seamlessly blends influences from Somali oral history, Ovidian tales and Homer’s Odyssey into a poetics that makes Portrait of Colossus cathartic, musical, emotionally satisfying as well as erudite.
Poet, educator and musician, Samatar Elmi's work plays in the liminal spaces between racial, socio-cultural and political identity claims. A graduate of Peepal Tree Press's Young Inscribe Mentoring Program, his work has been published in journals such as Magma, Ink Sweat and Tears and Iota, as well as in the anthology filigree. Samatar has previously been shortlisted for the Venture Award, the Complete Works II and New Generation African Poets. Portrait of Colossus is his début pamphlet.
