Harp in a Fireplace • Print + E-book

Summary

Harp in a Fireplace is a song of sacrifice and a pledge to a home riddled with grief. Hussain Ahmed’s debut poetry chapbook collages childhood memories with painful moments from a world that pays less attention to the damage it does to itself. His unflinching poems are proof that scars will always remind the wounded of the past they want forgotten. Harp in a Fireplace affirms that reflecting and naming the pains is the first phase to end harm. It reminds us that healing is possible and how long it takes.

Details

• Selected for the 2021 Emerging Poets Chapbook Series
• Saddle-stitched, risograph cover, 36 pages, 5″ x 7.25″, FSC-certified paper
• Purchase allows three interactive PDF or EPUB downloads
• Order print only
• Order e-book only

Praise

“‘I am sick of the nostalgia that comes with a stale memory,’ Hussain Ahmed writes, and ‘today, history is our enemy,’ in two separate poems where Wi-Fi features in the titles, in configurations as sobering as they are delightful. These modern and ancient juxtapositions are just one aspect of the relief I experienced reading Harp, a collection that brought ideas like ethos, faith, and soul back into my periphery.”
        —Tarfia Faizullah, author of Seam and Registers of Illuminated Villages

“Hussain Ahmed’s language resonates with the precision and detail of an earnest artist. A fine blend of history, memory, and spirituality, poems in this volume wax heroic: approaching despair, distance and loss with the certitude of hope. The poet invokes nature in its fullness and precariousness as witness to survival—birds in flight, bodies and geographies out of the hold of old colonies, the ritual of music engraved on human skin. This is a majestic work of an important voice.”
        —Naza Amaeze Okoli, editor of African Writer Magazine

Author

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. His poems are featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Kenyon Review, Transition Magazine, Waxwing, and elsewhere. He is a 2020 Commended poet for the Troubadour poetry prize, 2020 finalist for the Autumn House Chapbook Prize, and currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Mississippi.

Artwork

Cover by LK James.