Born in a Second Language: 9 (Button Poetry Contest Winner) - Softcover

Afiriyie-Hwedie, Akosua

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1943735921 ISBN 13: 9781943735921

Publisher: Button Poetry, 2021

Synopsis

Born in a Second Language troubles the spectrum between silence (or the limitations of the mouth) and music. Language is an embodied practice, especially present through our hands. Words, specifically names, are a means of conjuring a certain kind of existence, and defining who one will become. Thus, different languages unlock different worlds, and the names speakers answer to open them up to different becomings. Born in a Second Language is curious about the sonic, imagistic and linear implications on the page of speaking multiple languages when political, historical and cultural weights contend. It's compelled by disappearance and how translation is often a mode through which it occurs across borders - a way in which we obliterate, often due to what is untranslatable and considered unwelcome, as we come into new selves in order to survive new territory. Translation is not only a tool to understand language, but also a process that alters identity as speakers move through space and time. In the work, 'home' is one's body, gender, a mother, mother tongue, Brenda Fassie etc. How home is defined impacts each speaker's positionality and perspective; it allows for understanding the connection between the interior and exterior worlds of the speakers. While the use of past geographical homes and history is, in some poems, nostalgic and in homage, the greater project aims to examine how these elements aren't stagnant temporally but rather persist in and shape speakers presently.

About this title

About the Author

Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a Zambian-Ghanaian poet who was raised in Botswana. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She is a Hopwood and Meader Family Award winner. Akosua has received fellowships from Callaloo and the Watering Hole. Her work has appeared in Bettering American poetry, WusGood?, The Felt, and is forthcoming in Platypus Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: Button Poetry
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1943735921
• ISBN 13: 9781943735921
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 48