Mother Tongues: Poems, Paperback

Winner of the 2018 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize

Tsitsi Ella Jaji's second full-length collection of poems, Mother Tongues, begins at home, with the first words and loves we learn, and the most intimate vows we swear. How deep does your language go back? Jaji's artful verse is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore. The tongues speak the beginnings and the present; they capture and claim the losses, the ironies, and a poet's human evolution. Mother Tongues is a collection of language unto itself that translates directly to the heart.

TSITSI ELLA JAJI is a poet and scholar from Zimbabwe. Associate professor of English at Duke University, she is the author of two books of poetry: Beating the Graves, awarded honorable mention for the 2015 Sillerman Prize, and Carnaval. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and in journals including Black Renaissance Noire, Prairie Schooner, Bitter Oleander, New Coin, and Jalada.