Like We Still Speak

Winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize

Conversation and memory are at the heart of Danielle Badra's Like We Still Speak, winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. In her elegiac and formally inventive debut, Badra carries on talking with the sister and father she has lost, often setting her words alongside theirs and others' in polyphonic poems that can be read in multiple directions. Badra invites the reader to engage in this communal space where she investigates inheritance, witnessing, intimacy, and survival.

"This is a deeply spiritual book, all the more so because of its clarity and humility. Yet, we cannot walk away from the addictive command that so many of these poems ask us to follow: to read them along plural paths whose order changes while their immeasurable spirit remains unbound. Each poem is a singular vessel--of narratives, embodiments that correspond with memories, memories that recollect passion. . . . Like We Still Speak is a sanctum. Inside it, we are enthralled by beauty, consoled by light, sustained by making."
--Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara, from the Preface

Author: Danielle Badra
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: 10/29/2021
Pages: 84
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 8.60h x 6.90w x 0.30d
ISBN13: 9781682261767
ISBN10: 168226176X
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | General
- Poetry | Subjects & Themes | Death, Grief, Loss
- Poetry | LGBTQ+

About the Author

Danielle Badra is a queer Arab American poet who was raised in Michigan and currently resides in Virginia, where she received an MFA from George Mason University. Like We Still Speak is her first full-length collection.