Wild Imperfections: A Womanist Anthology of Poems

This collection celebrates the messy, imperfect, and wild women who refuse to be cleaned up by history. It features the work of Black women poets from Botswana to Brazil, who depict ancestors who made love for the sake of love, women who die with each orgasm while attempting to mark the extent of their own humanity, and women who dance with the dead. The collection teaches that love is always messy, our sacrament requires wet wipes, and we are just flesh and bone honing practice.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 06 January 2022
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press

This collection showcases the remarkable work of Black women poets from diverse countries, including Botswana and Brazil. Within its pages, we encounter ancestors who pursued love purely for the sake of its essence, as well as women who embraced the intensity of their orgasms as a means to assert their humanity.

This collection is dedicated to the nuns, singers, clowns, diviners, and conjurers who resist the relentless effort to sanitize history. These wildly imperfect women, adorned with slick braids, shiny skin, and succulent lips, are building new homes from clouds for future generations. They congregate here, united by their rejection of tough love that disguises hurt as a means to prove a point. Instead, they dance with the dead, their feet moving with exquisite grace, reflecting the smiles of their mothers.

Because martyrs often go unappreciated, these dirty/pretty women learn to walk cities like they own them, choosing the battles of their hearts with wisdom and discernment. If there is one lesson that this collection imparts, it is that love is inherently messy, that our sacrament necessitates the use of wet wipes, and that we are mere flesh and bone in the process of honing our craft.

Through their words, these Black women poets invite us to embrace the complexities and contradictions of love, to honor the messy and imperfect aspects of our human experience, and to celebrate the strength and resilience of those who refuse to be defined by societal expectations.

Weight: 338g
Dimension: 144 x 223 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781913175252