{"id":8696,"date":"2023-02-17T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T14:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/?p=8696"},"modified":"2023-02-21T09:48:28","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T16:48:28","slug":"poetry-blurbs-strong-meaningful-words-beget-more-in-a-beautiful-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/2023\/02\/17\/poetry-blurbs-strong-meaningful-words-beget-more-in-a-beautiful-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Praise for Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike and there’s more"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Read on to find out why we are so excited about publishing Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike’s volume of poetry, there’s more<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And be sure to watch the video for Seagulls<\/a>, which contains the stunning line about home being \u201canywhere we find something to love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Praise for there’s more<\/em> by Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn these memory-infused poems, home vanishes and reappears with moving suddenness: \u2018down the stairs\/of clouds,\u2019 in the expression on a beloved face, in parks, in songs, in the bones. This work sweeps our gazes across oceans, cultures, and years to explore how our shared human yearnings\u2014for belonging, for connection\u2014persist in the soul. With a full heart and keen inquiry, Umezurike finds tender language for the ineffable sting of departure, the ache of remembrance.\u201d \u2014Kiki Petrosino<\/a>, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUchechukwu Peter Umezurike\u2019s there\u2019s more<\/em> plumbs the grace of memory, the music of routes through stairs and scarves, silences and stares. Here language laces and weaves through the small pains which build, the quiet graces which relieve. Stories shift from the museum to the land to our eyes; each an aching momentary tender glimpse where, behind the words, there\u2019s more<\/em>.\u201d \u2014Derek Beaulieu<\/a>, Banff Poet Laureate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPalpating the soundscapes of memory from his homeland, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike finds Nigeria returning in the wind against a window. The sense-suffused language becomes the homeland. Memories enter the rooms of his poetry in skillfully articulated images. Whether writing about the military dictatorship that existed in the 1990s or mourning the devastation of the Niger delta by drilling, the poet refuses silence. Uniquely, Umezurike\u2019s dissent coexists with extraordinary tonal tenderness, as in \u2018The Old Way,\u2019 one of the best poems about nostalgia I have read. Rupture, heartbreak, hope, and efflorescence co-exist in Umezurike\u2019s unguarded lyrics. His brilliance disarms the mind.\u201d \u2014Alina Stefanescu<\/a>, author of Dor<\/a><\/em> and Ribald<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn there\u2019s more<\/em>, the reader is rhythmically lulled into coming face to face with the realities of a world that centers the voices of the global majority. Through the shapes and words that dance on the page, we become enchanted by an exquisite cadence that takes us into the psyches of the dehumanized and the disenfranchised.\u201d \u2014V Mason-John<\/a>, author of I Am Still Your Negro<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUchechukwu Umezurike in there\u2019s more<\/em> plumbs the depths of human emotions by creating poems that are touching, stunning, powerful, brilliant, tender, and heart-rending at the same time. In his hands, a poem which is often a small, discrete thing, becomes an entire universe of words\u2014novels, songs, treatises, and quiet declarations of rage. The reading of each poem causes my breath to be stilled, and I sit in wonder, and let the beauty, luminescence, and subtle sadness from these words caress my heart. \u2018Home is What the Tortoise Bears on Its Back,\u2019 is an example of Uchechukwu\u2019s mastery. In a few lines the author conjures up mythic tales from the time before time, middle passages, civil wars, migrations, gardens of Eden, love stories, exile, hard life, a kick-ass attitude, and a necessary resilience. In there\u2019s more<\/em> Uchechukwu reveals that he is a poet of first rank.\u201d \u2014Afua Cooper<\/a>, poet and author of Black Matters<\/a><\/em> and “The Halifax Explosion<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018What is home if it\u2019s a river,\u2019 asks Uche Peter Umezurike, in his astonishing new collection, there\u2019s more<\/em>. The superb poems that inhabit these enchanted pages display the immigrant experience in a manner that is simultaneously vast and yet introspective, where \u2019a poem about home is the mother struggling with the shell on her back.\u2019 This is a colourful, creative treatise on juxtaposition and place, where \u2018the parade of pines\u2019 and \u2018the way snow climbs down the stairs of clouds\u2019 mingles seamlessly \u2018sharp and sweet as cloves\u2019 with \u2018the gnarled cotton tree where memories of old fathers water the roots.\u2019 This is a world where udara trees, ravens, mangoes, bones, snow, and kola nuts find kinship with each other. Umezurike tantalizes with a skilled poet\u2019s turn of phrase that is \u2018precise like a smack.\u2019 I am thrilled for this alluring and magnificent poetry collection.\u201d \u2014Michael Fraser<\/a>, author of The Day-Breakers<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is not only the soulful agonies of lost home, intimacy, people, and places, not only (to paraphrase the poet) the noiseless arrival of nostalgia that leaves a shroud behind, not only the angst of living in the exile of one\u2019s own desires, in a place of one\u2019s own escape from the ruins of home. It is not only the haunts of the memories of times past and present. The poems of there\u2019s more<\/em> touch even more on the very thing of human social life: the character of experience.\u201d \u2014Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba<\/a>, author of The Postcolonial African Genocide Novel: Quests for Meaningfulness<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read on to find out why we are so excited about publishing Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike’s volume of poetry, there’s more. And be sure to watch the video for Seagulls, which contains the stunning line about home being \u201canywhere we find something to love.\u201d Praise for there’s more by Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike \u201cIn these memory-infused poems, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,110,60,151,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-books","category-news","category-poetry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8696"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8743,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8696\/revisions\/8743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.library.ualberta.ca\/ualbertapressblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}