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In The House Of My Father is the winner of the 2017 Two Sylvias Press 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 (Contest Judge)
Sample Poem:
Mushiraye
I draw a wedding scene,
Emaye spies the page.
I tell her about the aisle.
Either way she catches it,
spits stop. Warns dreaming
of a knot will only tie me to
a war-torn home. I look
at the drawing & find blood
on the page, a ring around
the bride’s eye. I decide
to keep my finger bare
like my legs were once,
unbristled, hinged tight.
I’ve grown rigid, whiskey-lipped,
gripped like a bottle’s neck,
full/of violence I cannot slip
into love.
Verily, I am my father’s daughter until
one day I bleed my mother’s way—quick
crying war. My body becomes a boat
fleeing a rabid shore. My skin is spanned
& I dream the distance safe.
