ALIEN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY
Poems
Tarfia Faizullah
Haymarket Books (6 April 2027)
Trade paper • ISBN-13: 9798888906552 • US $18.95 • 5 in x 8 in • 80 pgs
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Fulbright fellow and three-time Pushcart Prize winner Tarfia Faizullah fantasizes a future free of colonization in her third poetry collection.
In Alien of Extraordinary Ability, Faizullah is compelled back into the past where her Bangladeshi parents are falling in love in New York as their homeland fights for freedom while looking toward their own future as parents against the backdrop of American policy changes in immigration. The speaker longs for a love and a home of her own—basic longings complicated by concerns of displacement, migration, and state violence.
These poems question the nature of love, and strive to honor and memorialize the beloveds already in Faizullah’s life: friends, family, artists, and art forms. She asks, “What is the cost of being high-achieving—exceptional, even—in a colonized world?”
Formally, Faizullah employs the sonnet, found forms, erasure, a word bank compiled only of words from the Immigration Act of 1965, and poems written within the confines of bureaucratic documents including the Alien of Extraordinary Ability visa application form.
In Alien of Extraordinary Ability Faizullah excavates and attaches love for her own personal archive to the larger archive of Bangladeshi people whose histories and personal narratives are often obscured and overlooked by the bureaucracy and erasure of migration.
PRAISE:
Praise for Tarfia Faizullah
“This collection has propulsion. It has the fire. Faizullah can write her ass off.”
Tommye Blount, author of Fantasia for the Man in Blue
“Tarfia Faizullah is a poet of brave and unflinching vision.”
Natasha Trethewey
“This is a poetry of news–where brutality, desire, and beauty combine to form a rich testament of what poetry can do: to sing and disturb us awake, and leave us feeling more alive than ever before. Faizullah’s debut collection of poems is simply a triumph–it’s pure fire in your hands.”
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees
“Faizullah is an essential poet for our times.”
The Rumpus
“Faizullah’s entire collection—powerful, wide-ranging—is an affirmation, an accomplished second book.”
The Millions
“This collection glows.”
Signature Reads
“Intimate and prophetic. . . . A fierce confrontation of grief and belonging.”
The Riveter
“Faizullah is an immensely empathetic poet, and this visceral, muscle-deep quality penetrates her writing.”
Anomaly
“Remarkable. . . . Reading Faizullah, one might allude to Adrienne Rich’s poetry and her vision of confronting reality in fresh language. Striking, insightful poems that will move and delight readers. Highly recommended.”
Library Journal, starred review
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages and Seam. Tarfia’s writing features widely in the US and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me, and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere.
Recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Faizullah’s work has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere.
Tarfia’s writing is translated into Bengali, Persian, Chinese, and Tamil. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Bangladeshi immigrants and raised in Texas, Tarfia currently lives in Dallas.
RIGHTS INFORMATION:
Please contact subagents for the following languages and territories:
| Language/Territory | Subagent |
|---|---|
| China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam | Big Apple Agency |
| Dutch | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| English outside North America | David Grossman Literary Agency |
| French | Deborah Druba Agency |
| German | Paul & Peter Fritz AG Literatur Agentur |
| Greek | Read n' Right Agency |
| Hebrew | The Deborah Harris Agency |
| Italian | Berla & Griffini Rights Agency |
| Japanese | The English Agency (Japan) Ltd |
| Korean | BC Agency, or Korea Copyright Center |
| Portuguese | RIFF Agency |
| Russia/Baltics/Eastern Europe | Prava I Prevodi |
| Scandinavia | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| Spanish in Latin America | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Spanish in Spain | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Turkish | Anatolialit Agency |
For all other languages/territories, please contact Roam Agency.