The January Children

Safia Elhillo is a Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. She is the author of The Life and Times of Susie Knuckles.

Foreword by Kwame Dawes Acknowledgments asmarani makes prayer vocabulary Sudan Today. Nairobi: University of Africa, 1971. Print. to make use of water [did our mothers invent loneliness or . . . ] while being escorted from the abdelhalim hafez concert application for the position of abdelhalim hafez's girl abdelhalim hafez asks for references talking with an accent about home origin stories a brief history of silence the last time marvin gaye was heard in the sudan first interview for the position of abdelhalim hafez's girl the lovers talking with an accent about home first adornment callback interview for the position of abdelhalim hafez's girl bride price old wives' tales date night with abdelhalim hafez first quarantine with abdelhalim hafez self-portrait with dirty hair watching arab idol with abdelhalim hafez self-portrait with the question of race second date abdelhalim hafez wants to see other people red moon night self-portrait with yellow dress others alternate ending [& what is a country but the drawing . . . .] late-night phone call with abdelhalim hafez republic of the sudan / ministry of interior / passport & immigration general directorate / alien from sudanese origin passcard talking with an accent about home talking with an accent about home (second take) second quarantine with abdelhalim hafez portrait with asylum talking to boys about abdelhalim hafez at parties biopic containing lies about abdelhalim hafez asmarani does psychogeography why abdelhalim self-portrait with lake nasser abdelhalim hafez asks who the sudanese are the part i keep forgetting talking with an accent about home (reprise) third quarantine with abdelhalim hafez final interview for the position of abdelhalim hafez's girl self-portrait as abdelhalim hafez's girl portrait with abdelhalim hafez with the question of race lovers' quarrel with abdelhalim hafez portrait of abdelhalim hafez as orpheus glossary everything i know about abdelhalim hafez notes

"A taut debut collection of heartfelt poems that speak to people who can claim multiple cultural identities, and whose identities reflect multiple geographies. The book is both personal and political, a love letter to Sudan and a memoriam for ghosts of happiness past."-Publishers Weekly "Elhillo is a mesmerizing performer at slams and has garnered tens of thousands of views on YouTube, but her poems work equally well on the page. And they speak not only to people of color or African EmigrEs but to those of complicated heritage form anywhere in the world, strangers in strange lands, strangers even in their own lands, in their own skins."-Alex M. Frankel, Antioch Review "In its best moments-and there are many-and across poems, one feels the plummet of alienation that comes from partial belonging, and therefore, from not really belonging at all. . . . Throughout the book, Elhillo matches the formal choices of individual poems with a compelling voice. In unpunctuated lines with extra internal spaces that mark pauses, drags, and absences, Elhillo's language tumbles and accumulates; it points and then emphatically points again; it betrays a relentless awareness of audience, and thereby reveals at least one psychological reality of betweenness. . . . And it is Elhillo's consistent reaching across gaps-like Whitman's soul '[c]easelessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them'-that is most moving of all. Despite the omnipresence of the Sudanese Diaspora, the movement of the book is from absence to presence . . . . The book, in the end, is shot through with a faith in human communion despite immense communal and individual loss."-David Thacker, The Rumpus "The first sound of what will be a remarkable noise in African poetry. Safia Elhillo has already laid out in this collection a complex foundation for a rich and complex body of work. What is unmistakable is her authority as a poet-she writes with great control and economy, but also with a vulnerability that is deeply engaging. Above all, her poems are filled with delight-a quality of humor that is never trite but always honest and insightful."-from the foreword by Kwame Dawes "Safia Elhillo's triumph is not that she sings about novel love and heartbreak, but that she does so in an unforgettable voice."-Irene Mathieu, Muzzle "Safia Elhillo's The January Children offers the reader a galaxy of Sudanese voices engaging individual and collective memory in a manner that not only introduces readers to the nuances that animate that ancient land of layered diversity, which lends this collection a collage-like quality that is as sublime in its coherence as it is revelatory in its execution."-Post No Ills Magazine