Another Way to Split Water

Description

In Alycia Pirmohamed's debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman's body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing and separation just as often as it signals inheritance, revival, and recuperation. Language unfolds into unforgettable and arresting imagery, offering a map toward self-understanding that is deeply rooted in place. These poems are a lyrical exploration of how ancestral memory reforms and transforms throughout generations, through stories told and retold, imagined and reimagined. It is a meditation on womanhood, belonging, faith, intimacy, and the natural world. 'Pirmohamed is an immensely gifted poet' - Eduardo C. Corral 'An electric, taut, and glimmering achievement' - Aria Aber

Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. She is the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind, and the collaborative essay Second Memory, which was co-authored with Pratyusha. She is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network, a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics Program, and she currently teaches on the MSt. Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. Alycia has held post-doctoral positions at the University of Edinburgh and at the University of Liverpool, and she received an MFA from the University of Oregon and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.

'Pirmohamed writes with a flow which is rarely interrupted. She has a fine ear for the musicality in words and knows exactly where a line should turn' -- Susan Mansfield * The Scotsman * 'Pirmohamed's achievements speak for themselves ... each poem is crafted, each word perfectly placed, flowing into one another. Dreamlike, brimming with ideas, it's a collection that engulfs you, invites you to read more, to discover new jewels on each read' -- Heather McDaid * The Skinny * 'In Another Way to Split Water a reader gets to taste arrival before arrival, a form of tenderness that refracts: "an inherited vanishing/through the slit of a dream"' -- Bhanu Kapil 'Pirmohamed is an immensely gifted poet' -- Eduardo C. Corral 'An electric, taut, and glimmering achievement' -- Aria Aber 'You will want to map the navigations of these poems. You will be compelled to orbit their magnetic and inimitable oscillations' -- Shivanee Ramlochan '[Another Way to Split Water] inspired me so much. So many things I will think about differently now, from nature to form' -- Tice Cin, author of Keeping the House '[Pirmohamed's] language flows in elegant, mysterious ways, telling tales of heritage, history and belonging.' -- Toni Velikova, Scottish Poetry Library '[Pirmohamed's] language flows in elegant, mysterious ways, telling tales of heritage, history and belonging' * Bookseller * 'An extraordinary collection... it's one that I'm very much looking forward to returning to' * Glass Bookshop Radio * 'Another Way to Split Water is an homage to family, the natural world, and storytelling' -- Rebecca Mangra * Room Magazine * '[a] lyrical exploration of stories told and retold, ancestral memories reformed and transformed, and the imagined and reimagined' -- Hari Alluri * Massy Arts *