Description
Poetry. Longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection. Salat, or salah, means prayer in Arabic. In SALAT, the structure of prayer is transformed into poetic form free from the narrow strictures of Muslim and non-Muslim minds. At the most basic level, these poems interrogate coming of age as a Muslim immigrant boy in post-9/11 America. These poems take us from classrooms to hotel pools, corner stores to airports, playgrounds to dream states in order to pose questions and reassemble memories about place, belonging, alienation. This collection is less a statement on parenthood, state violence, racism, and disenfranchisement so much as a prayer hovering over it all, hoping against hope that the incantation might be enough to sustain us.
Author Bio
Dujie Tahat, winner of the 2020 Sunken Garden Chapbook Award, is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington State. The author of Here I Am O My God, selected by Fady Joudah for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, their poems have been published or are forthcoming in POETRY, Sugar House Review, The Journal, ZYZZVA, The Southeast Review, Southern Indiana Review, Asian American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Dujie Tahat has earned fellowships from Hugo House, Jack Straw, and the Poetry Foundation, and a scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers Conference. They serve as a poetry editor for Moss and Homology Lit and co- host The Poet Salon podcast. They got their start as a Seattle Poetry Slam Finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and Seattle Youth Speaks GrandSlam Champion, representing Seattle at HBO's Brave New Voices. Dujie Tahat is an MFA candidate in the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.
Author City: WA USA