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The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony by Ladan Osman Wins 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets
Somalian writer Ladan Osman has won the 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for her collection The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony. The African First Book Fund editorial board comprising Chris Abani, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, John Keene, Bernardine Evaristo and Kwame Dawes, unanimously picked Osman as the winner. Dawes praised her work, noting that she knows exactly how to capture both “consuming gravitas and delightful whimsy” in a poem.
Osman expressed her delight at being awarded the prize, saying: “I have so badly just wanted a chance to work, to be apparent to people in life and in poems.” She’ll receive a $1000 cash award and her book will be published with the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion Press in Senegal.
Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, The African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner are pleased to announce that Ladan Osman’s collection, The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony, is the winner of the 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. Osman will receive a $1000 cash award and publication of her book with the University of Nebraska Press and Amalion Press in Senegal.
“I deeply appreciate this prize,” Osman said after learning of the board’s decision. “I have so badly just wanted a chance to work, to be apparent to people in life and in poems. A bunch of things happened in the years spent writing this book: I’m excited to share what came out of those sometimes rough waters, and look forward to connecting to new readers and new communities.”
The African Poetry Book Fund publishes four new titles each year, including the winner of the Sillerman prize and one new volume by a major African poet.
African Poetry Book Fund Series Editor and Prairie Schooner Editor-in-Chief Kwame Dawes praised TheKitchen Dweller’s Testimony, saying that “only the genius of sincerity of voice and imagination can allow a poet to contain in a single poem both consuming gravitas and delightful whimsy. This is what we get again and again from the splendidly gifted poet Ladan Osman. The editorial team of the African Poetry Book Fund was unanimous in selecting her manuscript as winner of this year’s Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets.”
Osman, whose parents are from the city of Mogadishu in Somalia, has received fellowships from theLuminarts Cultural Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem, and the Michener Center for Writers. Her work has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Artful Dodge, Narrative Magazine, Prairie Schooner, RHINO, and Vinyl Poetry. Her chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, will appear in Seven New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Slapering Hol Press, 2014). She teaches in Chicago.
Last year’s winner was Kenyan poet Clifton Gachagua, whose collection, Madman at Kilifi, will be published in February 2014.
The Sillerman First Book Prize is named after philanthropists Laura and Robert F. X. Sillerman, whose contributions have endowed the establishment of the African Poetry Book Fund & Series. The Sillerman prize is awarded to African writers who have not published a book-length poetry collection. An “African writer” is taken to mean someone who was born in Africa, is a citizen or resident of an African country, or whose parents are African.
The Fund and its partners also support seminars, workshops, and other publishing opportunities for African poets, as well as the African Poetry Libraries Project. As a partner of the African Poetry Book Fund & Series, Prairie Schooner manages the Sillerman prize. In addition to Series Editor Dawes, the African First Book Fund editorial board is comprised of Chris Abani, Matthew Shenoda, Gabeba Baderoon, John Keene, and Bernardine Evaristo.
Information about the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets is available on the African Poetry Book Fund website, http://africanpoetrybf.unl.edu. You can also find more about Prairie Schooner athttp://prairieschooner.unl.edu or on Facebook and Twitter.
Partition by Ladan Osman
I am melancholic tonight. My soul is restless, itching to dance in the Jazira sand dunes, homesick. It flits from one soul to the other, crying over the dead bodies slain in the presidential villa today. I am bruised, shaken, bereft. I seek solace in the spoken word, in my sisters and their soothing words. Thank you Ladan. My wounds, sustained from centuries of wondering, have found home in your poem. I am home.
Ladan Osman is truly gifted with the word. She wields her pen like a Samurai sword, sinking the blade right into our hearts with the precision of a surgeon. Her collection, The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony, has won the prestigious 2014 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. Congratulations Ladan! May you continue to rise.
Why are there so many men idle in homes, at the curbs of charity drives,
in grocery store parking lots? Many of our fathers are hidden
from property management because they don’t exist on their forms.
They hardly exist off them. Why did our mothers say, “Write!”
and could only sign their names shakily? They had us fill forms
because they pressed too hard. It took too long. Their mothers
signed their names “X” and seemed bashful. My grandfathers
walked out of the bush and into cities
to drive bankers and diplomats. How did all our plans get foiled?
There are truck drivers, programmers, accountants, teachers
in the same man. What was the point of the piece of paper
if we could only put them in boxes, then mop floors at grocery stores
where we helped our mothers buy no-name brand cans and bread?
Why did we laugh and tell stories in the house and get so startled
outside it? Who was always watching us the moment we locked
doors behind us? Why did we lock our hearts and tongues?
Why did we come here? The same stories of better chances
at a table with biscuit crumbs, the cores and pits
of fruits eaten with good company. “Ah, ah,” the men say.
“Oh, oh,” the women say. For our children.
“Recite the names of your forefathers,” demanded our parents and their guests.
“What is your tribe? Your clan and sub-clan?”
“Did you know your mother’s tribe is the enemy of mine?”
And my mother flushed in rich waves.
My mother read parts of The Pearl to me. “How can someone
write such a story?” she murmured, her hand on her forehead.
She rolled all the grains and small stones inside her cheeks and
against the roof of her mouth. “The terrible machine,” she recited,
“Are we in it? Our pearl is you, you children, your minds.
You are our retirement.” She smelled like clove and I loved books
in a way I never loved them before. “This is your Scripture,”
my father said, and gave me the Quran. “You love language,
so argue with it. Ask it questions. Let it settle in your heart.”
How did God create a front between two seas; one bitter,
one sweet, and have them stay neighbors? The barrier
that separates our hope from despair is so steadfast.
Why is it that we often meet it and never cross
into oblivion? How is it there are many peoples
in many lands but we hardly know each other?
Who locked our hearts and tongues?
Words We Lost in the Water
If Somali hail fell from the sky, it would be cardamom.
Sidewalks would release its scent under our heels, we would fill
burlap bags with it, odd grains of rice mingling in our tea.
There my father is the Lion of God
and not a man who talks about position,
not a man who remembers position.
There, lips smile for love
and hope sounds like the English need:
don’t piss on my need, we say.
Trouble falls, a rock
down the narrow well of the throat.
Chest and bullet are twins
separated by a handsome jaw, a beauty mark.
There my brother is Victorious
and not the odd grain in the sieve of my father’s heart.
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