Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Yalie Saweda Kamara
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
June 2025 Poet: Yalie Saweda Kamara
Split Infinity
In autumn, I learn to forever break bad luck.
As a hand lay on my stomach, I remember what happened
before: the way I was taught
to soundly build a church from calcified stone.
A hot palm rests on the new danger that slowly bubbles
where the child once was. I sanctuary and begin
to slightly arc my mouth; it bends the storm
above my head until it makes a haven of its own rain.
My tongue is a plush aisle through which to gently
lead the holy to the back of my throat.
Three women braid into a wind that rushes me. We bridge
our voices. Opalesce our breaths. This is what we do
to calmly trouble the water.
We gospel from the base of me until blood spills from
the flesh rock. We loudly echo in my womb. We almost
forget to quietly watch the way
a broken curse weeps and pleads for mercy.
Source
From Besaydoo by Yalie Saweda Kamara (Milkweed Editions, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Yalie Saweda Kamara. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. milkweed.org
Poet Bio
Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, California. She is the 2022-2025 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. Her debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024) is the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and is a finalist for the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry and the 2025 Firecracker Award in Poetry. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration (The Hawkins Project, 2022) and the author of the chapbooks A Brief Biography of My Name (Akashic Books/African Poetry Book Fund, 2018) and When The Living Sing (Ledge Mule Press, 2017). Among her awards, Kamara has received scholarships and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Book Critics Circle, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Smith College, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She received a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati, an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College. An assistant professor of English at Xavier University, she teaches courses in global and diasporic literature, creative writing, and hip-hop studies.