
Elhillo, Safia
WebsiteA Pushcart Prize nominee, Safia Elhillo is Sudanese by way of Washington, DC. A Cave Canem fellow who received an MFA in poetry from The New School, her debut The January Childern (University of Nebraska Press, 2017) is praised by Kwame Dawes as “The first sound of what will be a remarkable noise in African poetry.” Recipient of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Elhillo’s work appears in several publications, including POETRY Magazine, Callaloo, the anthologies The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and Again I Wait for This to Pull Apart. Her additional fellowships include that with The Conversation, and Crescendo Literary and The Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Incubator. She has shared her work at such venues as the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway, the Kennedy Center, the South African State Theatre and TEDxNewYork.
fact:
the arabic word هواء /hawa/ means wind
the arabic word هوى /hawa/ means love
test: [multiple choice]
abdelhalim said you left me holding wind in my hands
or
abdelhalim said you left me holding love in my hands
abdelhalim was left empty
or
abdelhalim was left full
fairouz said o wind take me to my country
or
fairouz said o love take me to my country
fairouz is looking for vehicle
or
fairouz is looking for fuel
oum kalthoum said where the wind stops her ships we stop ours
or
oum kalthoum said where love stops her ships we stop ours
oum kalthoum is stuck
or
oum kalthoum is home
the lovers
khartoum in the eighties
my mother with ribbons in her hair
dress fanning about her nutmeg calves
my father
who i hear
was so lively & handsome
that only bad magic could have emptied
& filled him with smoke
the borrowed record player
the generation that would leave
to make nostalgia of these nights
to hyphenate their children
& grow gnarled by
every winter
but tonight motown crackling
into the hot twilight
mosquitoes drifting
near the lanterns
my parents dance
without touching
second quarantine with abdelhalim hafez
the lyrics do not translate
arabic is all verbs for what
stays still in other languages
تصبح to morning what the
translation to awake cannot
honor cannot contain its rhyme
with تسبح to swim tomake
the night a body of water
i am here now & i cannot morning
i am twenty-four & always
sick small for my age & always
translating i cannot sleep
through the night
no language has given me
the rhyme between ocean&
wound that i know to be true
sometimes when the doctors
draw my blood i feel
the word at the edge of my tongue
halim sings أغرق aghraq
i am drowning i am drowning
the single word for all the water
in his throat does not translate
halim sings teach me to kill
the tear in its duct halim sings
i have no experience in love
nor have i a boat & i know he
cannot rest cannot swim
through the night
i am looking for a voice with
a wound in it a man who could
only have died by a form of
drowning let the song take
its time let the ocean close
back up
The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017)
asmarani (New Generation African Poets: Tatu) (Akashic Books, 2016) [chapbook]
ars poetica (MIEL, 2016) [chapbook]
a suite for ol’ dirty (MIEL, 2016) [chapbook]
Winner, 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets
Nominee, 2016 Pushcart Prize,
Winner, 2015 The Brunel University African Poetry Prize,