{"title":"Mahtem Shiferraw","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eMahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eCallaloo\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ePrairie Schooner\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, Poets.org, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThe 2River View\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e Luna Luna Magazine\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eDiverse Voices Quarterly\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eNumero Cinq\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, and more. Her short story “The River” received an Honorable Mention at \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eGlimmer Train\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e’s Open Fiction Contest. In 2016, she won the Sillerman Prize for African Poets and her full-length collection, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eFuschia\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her poetry chapbook, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eBehind Walls \u0026amp; Glass\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, was published by Finishing Line Press. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eShe has served as editor for\u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e Atlas and Alice\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, The \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eBleeding Lion\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThe Hunger Mountain\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, and more. She is the founder of\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAnaphora Arts, a nonprofit organization working to advance the works of writers and artists of color. She has served as a jury member for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Lucy Munro Brooker Prize, among others. She is a Pushcart prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. In 2018, she received the Imani Award for Artistic Excellence from Harvard University. As of 2020, she also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today. She holds an MFA from Vermont College. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"nomenclatures-of-invisibility","title":"Nomenclatures of Invisibility","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThrough a personal, historical, and political lens, Mahtem Shiferraw attends to the collective experiences inherited through deeply-rooted ancestry, tracing patterns of movement and migration, sorrow and invisibility, and the resulting complicated notions of home.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eNomenclatures of Invisibility\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, Shiferraw calls us to carve out space for the multitudes of selves we carry when we migrate across boundaries of body, language, and land. With momentum, giving name to everything in her path from the longing that comes with migration to her beloved eucalyptus tree, she blurs physical and temporal borders, paying homage to ancestors past, present, and future. Shiferraw writes unapologetically against erasure, against invisibility, instead creating a space that holds grief lovingly, that can tend to the wounds held and held in the endlessly-traveling body. Brilliant with abundance and texture, Shiferraw’s poems dismantle the empire's sterile use of language, both historical and present. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHere, Mahtem Shiferraw builds a home within her poems, attentively naming those who exist within them out of invisibility and into the radiant light: “We walk \/ in unison too: our backs bending at once, \/ our arms breaking, our abdomens \/ kicked into silence, thighs bleeding. Through \/ this I ask; am I still lit? And they, again \/…what else would you be—”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\n\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 1.4em;\"\u003e\u003cspan id=\"m_2442220948950633371gmail-docs-internal-guid-d1e70b76-7fff-a3ac-80f2-075303902d8c\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"im\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003ePraise for \u003cem\u003eNomenclatures of Invisibility\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"In Mahtem Shiferraw’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eNomenclatures of Invisibility\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e, the histories of self, nation, tribe, and culture are illuminated in a glorious light and the power of sight. What is named is known, and in these poems, driven by an internalized sovereignty and a compass whose magnet is rooted in seeing the unseen, Shiferraw makes the reader aware of the things we so often choose to look away from. In poems laced with lyrical and formal beauty and tinged with the devastations of history and its colonizing forces, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eNomenclatures of Invisibility\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e insists on facing all the facets that make a person a person and a place a place. These are poems that help us come to terms with how we have arrived at this moment. Undaunted and unwilling to bow, Shiferraw draws the map of her own lineage and tells the story of her own migration: 'here' she tells us, 'is where you learn the story of a black kingdom\/ without a white conqueror.'” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Matthew Shenoda, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Way of the Earth\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"These poems reveal to us something new about naming, a language that’s full of the body’s blood, full of dust and bones and fire, full of seeds and wind. The shifting landscapes from Eritrea and Ethiopia to Los Angeles crackle and sing, reflecting the shifting sense of self (woman, traveler, mother, storyteller) and the history this speaker carries, sometimes a burden, sometimes a blessing. The water she finds as a place she can rest, the mothers and grandmothers who gave her life, and under it all, the 'art of invisibility, the requiem of solitude' (a version of Keats’s Negative Capability) which the poet relies on, 'because it won’t ask me to point towards home.' This is a deeply resonant voice, filled with the pain of the immigrant experience and filled with its many rich gifts.\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dorianne Laux, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOnly As The Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003e\n\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 1.4em;\"\u003eTranscendence\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eThe strength of the Blue Nile \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ehas taught her not to unravel \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ein front of men questioning her presence. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAnd when they call her flower, lotus, sunshine\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e she knows only this: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003esuch names cannot contain \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ethe transcendence of her strengths. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAnd so she calls herself water \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eand keeps her body from breaking open,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eand when she finds herself by riverbanks\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e suddenly floating over Abbay \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003ehere, she says, here is my name: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eI am more, I am free.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOA Editions, Ltd.","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":45961799860453,"sku":"978-1-950774-90-6","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Paperback (Signed)","offer_id":45961799893221,"sku":"978-1-950774-90-7","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/products\/NomenclaturesOfInvisibility_CVR_MR2_1200pxRGB_SM.jpg?v=1675788165"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0982\/0178\/collections\/SHIFERRAW_PHOTO_2_Edited.jpg?v=1670436948","url":"https:\/\/shop.boaeditions.org\/collections\/mahtem-shiferraw.oembed","provider":"Boa Editions","version":"1.0","type":"link"}