Enjambed with fierce grief and an unsurrendered knowing, Kofi Antwi’s Tidal Wave arrives.

vintage

orange can’t fathom what black is, — I’m
rooting for everyone black to appraise their skin,
the dystopian perpetuates, rivers forge mind,
matter to pieces of fragments, but I’m blacker
than black, or blue phi. kidsare dancing and shuffling
but – I don’t have a buck to give no more, or less – I
give what has been taken, next stop two fiff and
everything is depleted.

In praise:

In his debut chapbook, poet Kofi Antwi takes the reader on lyrical landscapes that move in and out of social critique, providing a “report from the inside,” to reference the poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Language is the vessel, the conduit through which Antwi refuses the tried and true tropes—pushing the boundaries of poetic intent, recording the reverberation of what these social structures give us through an inquiry that is melodic and mesmerizing.  –Randall Horton, author, 289-128

Borne of great tectonic unrest spanning the distances between Ghana and Staten Island, The Old Testament and the Wu-Tang Clan, Vulcanian wrath and joy’s small-voiced persistence in the face of iniquity, the poems of Tidal Wave, Kofi Antwi’s debut collection, harbor both the blunt force and ameliorating grace its title suggests. These poems dissolve into the bloodstream, leaving you with a blue head rush. Kofi Antwi is a wild new magus whose invocations couple the calamity and revival ever redefining the american landscape.  –Tariq Shah, author, Whiteout  Condition  

In this powerful collection, Kofi Antwi’s poems rise inside of you, revealing a hidden perspective of the Island and illuminating the often overlooked voices of black and brown communities on the North Shore and the terror of racism that threatens to drown us.   –Claire Jimenez, author, Staten Island Stories