Nomenclatures of Invisibility

Praise for Your Body Is War

“This is a collection of harrowing, prismatic lyrics made by severances and war and possessed by memory and place. In a language that dilates between the epic and the humble, nearly invisible, Mahtem Shiferraw does not once allow readers to imagine that war is anything but bodied, personal, inherited. Shiferraw’s work is elemental, brilliant, fierce, and with mystery and exactitude, she pushes language past itself and into breathtaking resonances.”

— Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria

“Elegant and heart-wrenching, these poems possess a powerful voice that travels across oceans to reconnect with the language and stories of Ethiopia, Mahtem Shiferraw’s homeland. Your Body Is War speaks poignantly about the inherited historical traumas, the ache and beauty of memory, and the strength it takes to endure the wounds of a nation, of a family, of a conflicted self.”

— Rigoberto González, author of What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth: A Memoir of Brotherhood

 

Praise for Fuchsia

“Fuchsia, culled from robust life and a finely tuned imagination, captures mysteries of the heart and mind alongside everyday rituals. Each poem dares us line by line, and suddenly we’re inside the delicate mechanism of a deep song. The magical, raw, bittersweet duende of Fuchsia speaks boldly. The personal history and emotional architecture of Ethiopia and Eritrea reside in every portentous poem here. But the stories, each shaped and textured by true feeling, are also ours because they beckon to us.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa, author of The Emperor of Water Clocks  

“In sometimes startlingly precise, and always musical, language, Shiferraw writes of her childhood in Ethiopia and of her contemporary life in Los Angeles with clarity, insight, and courage. Whether she is writing about butchering a sheep, uncles disappearing, a mother’s mystical definition of self, of war, of poverty, of Kalashnikovs, or of hair, the words on these pages ‘rummage’ until they explode—into beauty.”

— Gail Wronsky, author of So Quick Bright Things 

“These poems are always informed with a bittersweet sense of exile, of witness, and of a properly ambivalent stance toward the bewildering consumerist culture in which the writer now finds herself. Yet Shiferraw’s poetry is also suffused with wonder—richly associative, Whitmanic in its linguistic energy and totally complex, shifting without warning from wit to gravity, from self-reflection to lyric abandon. Fuchsia is a richly promising debut.”

— David Wojahn, author of World Tree

“Color weaves through the collection, but in ‘Synesthesia,’ colors shoot up like flares to illuminate the trauma of fleeing home. . . . Gifted with synesthesia, the poet knows the world through color. Through her complex use of color, Shiferraw reveals home, made again through the action of memory, lending heartache, depth, and comfort to our lives.”

— Mary Catherine Ford, World Literature Today

“[Fuchsia] is deeply sensual: full of color, sense memories, and small details of life.”

— Alex Dueben, The Ru