No Gods Live Here
Poems
Conceico Lima author Shook translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Deep Vellum Publishing
Published:30th May '24
Should be back in stock very soon
WINNER OF THE 2021 WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS—ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS POEMS IN TRANSLATION CONTEST
No Gods Live Here, the first book-length collection by a woman from São Tomé to appear in English, is grounded in the lush islands' history of slavery, colonialism, and independence.
A career-spanning collection from giant of Santomean poetry Conceição Lima, No Gods Live Here catalogues and memorializes the cruelties and triumphs of the country's past alongside the poet's own childhood poems set against the tiny island nation's distinctive flora and geography. Through vivid imagery, Lima evokes São Tomé and Príncipe, from popular Santomean music to imagery of fishermen on the beach, while remaining ever aware of the subjective meeting of memory, time, and place.
Through poetry, Lima unites past and present to resurrect hope in human creation and the possibility of metamorphosis.
“This prize-winning translation haunts. In the vein of a paracolonial text, the poem examines the specters of a racialized human commodity and its ecological aftermath. As if magic or conjure, ‘Afroinsularity’ launches with hints of ghosts and ends in a colony of haints. The reading of each deftly interpreted line thrusts the reader to beautifully confront the ways in which land holds the stories that history attempts to colonize, and how land will out the truth until the long-buried rest.” —Citation by Airea D. Matthews, 2021 Judge of the Words Without Borders—Academy of American Poets Poems in Translation Contest
Conceição Lima has emerged in the postcolonial period as one of lusophone Africa's foremost contemporary poets." —Russell G. Hamilton
ISBN: 9781646053322
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
225 pages