Canvassing the so-called refugee crisis in central Europe, Wadud's poems of water and light, transit and migrancy, confront the starkest intimations of humanity with grace, reading voices from the horror of the headlines.“You can say their names,” Wadud exhorts the reader, and her poems do just that; give language to those dispossessed. This overview extends vistas of possibility, as the oceanic current of this writing insists upon a common element, falsifying "fickle" borders.
— CamFINALIST FOR THE 2019 HURSTON/WRIGHT AWARD
An urgent and vital debut collection of poems that mixes ekphrasis with reportage to draw a new narrative of our present-day migration crises
Crosslight for Youngbird explores the slipperiness of borders, as well as borders' tentacles: mother tongue, language and mastery, citizenship and nationality, migration and flight. These poems are concerned with the demands we make on our body, the limits of those demands, and ultimately, how everyone inhabits space.