“Tender, beautiful, stark, painful—”
— Leila Fadel
DEBUT COLLECTION OF POEMS:
Song of My Softening
A profound and intersectional text, Song of My Softening is a queer, fat, love song of the interior. A late-bloomer’s coming of age lyric.
This collection is a study in tenderness, vulnerability and candor. James provides a window into what perseverance looks like, ungilded: a mirror for anyone born into a culture outside of their identity. These poems hum with multitudinous survival.
Each poem is a celebration of sound. Born from revolutionary praise songs of Yoruba culture, Trinidadian Soca and Calypso, British Pop and Punk, American Gospel and R&B, Song of My Softening will sing itself into your soul.
“One of the most exciting poetry debuts in recent memory.”
— Kaveh Akbar
REVIEWS
I had to wait more than a year to read her first full-length collection, “Song of My Softening”; it was entirely worth it.
Her poems explore the experiences of a Black queer woman whose life and body are routinely dismissed and disparaged. But she persists until she can sing in full-throated celebration, “Today we are alive / in summer. Unencumbered.” This is an intimate, vulnerable and ultimately triumphant collection.
— Ron Charles, Washington Post
REVIEWS
“RARE, TURNED, RESTORED.”
— Ms. Magazine
“…THE POEMS IN SONG OF MY SOFTENING MAKE CLEAR THE EXTENT TO WHICH SHE IS ATTUNED TO THE BODY AND MIND.”
— Shondaland
“SONG OF MY SOFTENING IS HEAVILY INFORMED BY THE TURMOIL OF OUR TIME AND YET JAMES’ OPTIMISM AND JOY SPARKLE ON THE PAGE.”
— Lavender Magazine
“READ AND LOVED”
— Debutiful
“YOU’LL PROBABLY SOB WHILE READING THIS RAW AND DEEP COLLECTION.”
— Cosmopolitan
“ALL POETRY LOVERS SHOULD TAKE NOTE…”
— Book Riot
“SONG OF MY SOFTENING CHARTS THE COLLECTION’S SPEAKER FINDING SOFTNESS EVEN IN THE FACE OF GENERATIONAL TRAUMA AND OPPRESSION. IN EXPLORING THIS JOURNEY, JAMES ENCOURAGES THE READER TO EXPLORE THEIR MOST SENSUAL AND JOYFUL SELF. ”
— Read Poetry
REVIEWS
"One of the defining poets of her generation…Omotara deepens the unsaid with such brilliant sonic resonances, hinting at truths too complex to tell any other way, which is what poetry can do. And does in each poem in this astonishing book."
— Idra Novey
Additional praise for Song of My Softening
ABOUT
Omotara James is the author of the NAACP Image Award nominated poetry collection, Song of My Softening, (Alice James Books, 2024). James’ poems have been featured in NPR’s Morning Edition, the Washington Post, the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day series and Poetry Daily. You can find her poems in print and online at Poetry Magazine, The Nation, BOMB Magazine, the Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, the Believer, Literary Hub, Guernica, Gulf Coast and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Daughter Tongue, was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, (Akashic Books, 2018), for the New Generation African Poets Box Set.
She has performed on various stages including the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, 92NY, the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, the New York City Poetry Festival and the Poetry Project. Her work has been anthologised and selected for inclusion in various publications.
James is a Guest Editor of The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She is the recipient of the 2023 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation; a New York City Department of Cultural Affairs grant; a Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation Literature Award; a New York Foundation of the Arts Poetry Fellowship; an Artist Relief grant; a 92NY Discovery Poetry Award; a Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Poetry; the inaugural Thomas Lux Scholarship from The Palm Beach Poetry Festival; four Pushcart Prize nominations and a Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, from Hofstra University.
Her poems were shortlisted for the 2025 NAACP Image Award and the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She has been invited to residency fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, the Cave Canem Foundation and Lambda Literary, among other awards and recognitions.
Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants. She has lived in England, Scotland and was raised primarily in America. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Hofstra University and an MFA in Poetry from New York University. She has been invited to instruct workshops and deliver craft talks at New York University, the New School, the Pratt Institute, the 92NY Unterberg Poetry Center, Cave Canem Foundation, the Poetic Justice Institute, the Hudson Valley Writers Center, Office Hours, the Association for Size and Diversity Health, the Queens Public Library, etc.
Contact us.
Email us at assistant [dot] omotarajames [at] gmail [dot] com to inquire about bookings for speaking engagements, workshops, manuscript critiques or commissions.
NOW BOOKING Spring / Summer 2025!
Follow me @omotarajames
“She’s a great escape artist, and just when you think you know her, she disappears.”
— Lewis Warsh