In The House Of My Father

Winner of the Two Sylvias Press 2017 Chapbook Prize, judged by Kaveh Akbar.



Praise for In The House Of My Father



It's rare to encounter a first utterance of a young poet so fully formed, so stirring and singular and urgent as Hiwot Adilow's In the House of My Father. In the span of eighteen poems, Hiwot addresses with grace and formal dexterity domestic and divine loves, along with the conscious and unconscious violences we often commit in their pursuit. "Everything I've done has been in Love's name," she writes, then shows us: a tongue bitten "dead raw," a girl is an "old house, burning." Language becomes a kind of haven, shelter to step into after (or during) the storm: "A hymn slithered from my throat, became a shawl." --Kaveh Akbar