Full Description
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Tares Oburumu's collection is a brief history of where he came from: Syma, a neglected oil-producing region of Nigeria. After growing up with a single mother in the creek- and brook-marked region, and himself now a single parent, Oburumu examines single parenthood and how love defines family circles. Mixing music, religion, and political critique, Origins of the Syma Species evokes pasts and futures.
Inspired by the relative chaos found in the origin of things, Oburumu's poems explore how the beauty of chaos binds us to our ancestral roots. In his poems Oburumu identifies with anyone who is a single parent or is dealing with the lonely trauma of a broken home. His poems instill hopefulness in a world that has the means to throw many into poverty and agony.
Contents
Foreword by Kwame Dawes
Book 1
Emerging
Acts of a Green House
Tunnel
Parental Guidance for August Children Watching the Movie A Beautiful Mind
My Father's Last Hope for Water
Illustrations Showing Figures of Speech Left on a Telephone Line Years after the Civil War
Teaching Metaphysics, or Disciplinal Notes on Self-Culture
The Eulogy & a Brief Description of Buckingham House
Surrogacy
Let There Be Lamplight
Maud, or Letter to the White Egrets
Paradise
Syma Minor
How to Love the Boats
Book 2
A Long Walk on Endlessness, the City of J. K. Anowe, the Decembrist
Music, or Immortality
In the Time of the Telephone
Running
How to Love a Girl—Austen College Recital for Pablo Neruda's Genius
& the I Is the Revolution
The Origin
Note 1—a Vision of Afghanistan
Note 2—Syma
Altar
Notes
