The Water Between Us

“From the deep blue waters of memory, heritage, and invention, Shara McCallum’s poems sing an innovative music that is at once mysterious and utterly familiar, fresh and wise, always lyrical. Welcome, welcome, these new poems, and this new poet.” —Elizabeth Alexander, author of Body of Life, The Venus Hottentot, and Diva Studies "W.E.B. Dubois speaks of ever feeling one's twoness, two warring bloods, two consciousnesses in the same body. McCallum's amazing first book brings this 'twoness' into brilliant focus. But its triumph is in how it enables us to perceive the invisible spaces between—the gaps in knowledge and history, the agonizing separations and distances, the losses that can't be spoken and, in the end, are untranslatable. McCallum is one of the most exciting new voices in poetry today." —Toi Derricotte, author of The Black Notebooks and Tender "In taut lyrics of landscape and loss, amid "Trees my tongue had forgotten," Shara McCallum creates a Bildungsroman that comingles the personal with the archetypal. Cast out of the garden of Jamaica as a child, she bears its tropical scent and lush residue, its salty language and sexual sting, through the laborious process of becoming: "say home /see what stays. The Water Between Us is a tough, beautiful book. Shara McCallum could be the spiritual daughter of Derek Walcott and Lucille Clifton." —Michael Waters, author of Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum