In her debut poetry collection, (University of Arkansas Press, April 2024), Saba Keramati explores the shifting nature of the self. In lyrics and a variety of poetic forms, such as the cento and abecedarian, Keramati’s speaker considers the personal and communal histories that have shaped her—addressing events including the meeting of her Chinese mother and Iranian father in a California grocery store, the murder of Vincent Chin in a 1982 hate crime in Michigan, and 9/11. Keramati searches for language and formal structure to hold / a shield I never wanted to carry,” she writes. The poems instead find a home in fluidity—of identity and expression: “I’ll always be / here, chameleoning myself // with every shift of the light: / the underside of an oyster shell.”
