Self-Mythology

£12.99

In the search for a true home, what does it mean to be confronted instead by an insurmountable sense of otherness? This question dwells at the center of Saba Keramati’s Self-Mythology, which explores multiraciality and the legacy of exile alongside the poet’s uniquely American origin as the only child of political refugees from China and Iran. Keramati navigates her ancestral past while asking what language and poetry can offer to those who exist on the margins of contemporary society.

In the search for a true home, what does it mean to be confronted instead by an insurmountable sense of otherness? This question dwells at the center of Saba Keramati’s Self-Mythology, which explores multiraciality and the legacy of exile alongside the poet’s uniquely American origin as the only child of political refugees from China and Iran. Keramati navigates her ancestral past while asking what language and poetry can offer to those who exist on the margins of contemporary society.

ISBN: 9781068644665
74 pages
Date published: 20/03/2025
Paperback

For Fans Of: Ocean Vuong, Hafez, Nina Mingya Powles

PRAISE:

Keramati’s first collection is elegant, thoughtful and precise, a lyrical exploration of her cultural inheritances. —Dave Coats, Poetry Book Society

Keramati takes confessional poetics to new heights, scrutinizing the self as a site excavated, and the home(lands) as a body whose scattered limbs might yet be reassembled. A number of lines are seared into my brain, triumphant and forthright in their brilliance. —Sarah Ghazal Ali, Electric Lit

These astonishing poems, crackling with wit and music, scrutinize and shoulder the histories that hammer the self into existence. The poems are rendered in language so beautiful, so startling I often gasped. Saba Keramati is an immensely gifted poet. In Self-Mythology, she reminds us the self is plural, fluid. Her interrogations are empowering and instructive and deftly crafted. —Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine

Keramati’s gorgeous debut collection examines the body, family, language, time, and, of course, the self. —Connie Pan, Book Riot

A refreshing, smart, unromanticized understanding of home and homeland that pushes back on capitalist understandings of otherness in favor something more beautifully un-heroic and human. —Megan Fernandes

Saba Keramati is a writer, editor, and educator from the Bay Area. A winner of the 2023 92NY Discovery Poetry Contest, she received her MFA from UC Davis. Her writings have appeared in Adroit Journal, AGNI, The Margins, Poet Lore, and other publications. The poetry editor for Sundog Lit, Keramati currently lives in Dearborn, Michigan, with her partner and cats.