"How thin the seam between the world, and the world,"
Tarfia Faizullah writes in her first book, Seam --
winner of the Crab Orchard Review's 2014 First Book Award
and the Great Lakes College Association New Writers award.
The book, which Natasha Trethewey
calls "Beautiful and necessary," is a confrontation of,
and a reckoning with, uncontrollable violences
against Bangladeshi women in the 1971 liberation war.
Seam reminds us that poetry can be something more nuanced
than a survival tactic.
It can be a way of living and breathing
in the face of suffering and history, vulnerability,
and presence.
Tarfia is a Bangladeshi-Texan poet, educator, and editor.
She is the author of Seam as well as
the forthcoming Register of Illuminated Villages, which
we'll have to wait even longer to read.
That second book will be out from Graywolf in 2017.
She's the recipient of a Pushcart Prize,
scholarships, and fellowships from Kundiman, Breadloaf,
Vermont Studio Center and others.
She's the Nicholas Delbanco visiting professor
of poetry in the Helen Zell writers program
at the University of Michigan.
And she co-directs The Organic Weapon Arts chapbook press
and video series with Jamaal May.
Please welcome Tarfia Faizullah.
[APPLAUSE]