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.
RECOMMENDED BY NPR, CLMP, USA TODAY, COSMOPOLITAN, LIBRARY JOURNAL, SHONDALAND, BOMB MAGAZINE, LAMBDA LITERARY REVIEW, BOOK RIOT & MS. MAGAZINE
RECOMMENDED BY NPR, CLMP, USA TODAY, COSMOPOLITAN, LIBRARY JOURNAL, SHONDALAND, BOMB MAGAZINE, LAMBDA LITERARY REVIEW, BOOK RIOT & MS. MAGAZINE
STARRED REVIEW BY SARAH MICHAELIS, LIBRARY JOURNAL
“It’s not often that fat women feel such thorough representation of themselves not only in poetry but in any media and not only in the beautiful moments but in the sorrowful ones, ranging throughout life. James does a brilliant job of portraying this and all her themes brilliantly; highly recommended.”
“Tender, beautiful, stark, painful—”
— Leila Fadel
“The insightful debut by James explores the body and identity with bracing honesty and directness…Often transgressive and always enlightening, this provocative collection confronts what it means to see and be seen, to consume and be consumed.”
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
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 Book Club
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
“One of the most exciting poetry debuts in recent memory.”
— Kaveh Akbar
Praise for Song of My Softening
“Omotara James is a poet of the body, and Song of My Softening moves us emotionally as it reminds us of our physical and sensual selves. These poems beg to be spoken aloud as one sister might to another, or as one sister might to an audience of sisters. These are daring poems from a poet brave enough to take the kind of risks that lead to beauty: ‘Your fat spills soft across the moonlit crown of grass./Your soulmates are a gaggle of fish, shoaling thick,/until you are schooled enough in this love.”
— Jericho Brown
“A sumptuous, unforgettable debut, Song of My Softening relentlessly unearths and acknowledges the pains of the past, though its work is ecstatic in equal measure. James wields language masterfully, not as a weapon but as an instrument that can transform pain into a song of praise, for pleasure and survival, for the body and its bounties. It is a song that rings and rings, that will ring in me for a very long time.”
— Melissa Febos
"Omotara James has used the page, the word and this wonderful book, Song of My Softening, to etch a particular achy wandering silence that is as loud and brilliant as any book I've read. One can only argue whether an abundance of skill or will was most necessary to pull off this literary feat. One cannot, and should not, ever argue about the book's multilayered longing boom."
— Kiese Laymon
“In her debut poetry collection, Song of my Softening, Omotara James carves out a hard-earned way of knowing: a way of seeing through the language we've been given to a clear understanding of self, of body, of being. Her voice and these poems move with a surefooted and sensual grace through pain and shame toward abundance and a tender truth-telling. Hers is an eye that doesn't shy away. She lifts what the world has hidden in shadow up to the light and lets it shimmer.”
— Camille Rankine, Author of Incorrect Merciful Impulses
REVIEWS
“Song of My Softening builds upon the legacy of Whitman’s Song of Myself and its celebration of the body, flawed and messy and beautiful. Omotara James is, without a doubt, one of the most exciting debut voices of the year.”
— Ronnie K. Stephens, TPQ —
"James is a master of song, as adept at the minimalist line as she is with sweeping lines that span the page, continually surprising with turns of phrase that are equal parts prophetic and musical. This is a tremendous first collection."
REVIEWS
"[Song of My Softening] is a siren song, a brilliant, harsh indictment of the way we communicate ideas about the body, sex, and womanhood to our young girls, and how we grow up into the women we are, as queer women of color. And even more than that, it is a poet’s handbook, viciously interrogating what makes a poem, and how to expand and contract the poem’s form into something useful and even something revolutionary. Finally, Song Of My Softening is a sharp, beautifully-wrought collection of poems, as well as a tool for grieving, a personal diary of loss."
— Joanna Acevedo, The Adroit Journal
Additional praise for Song of My Softening
REVIEWS
Andrew Hu, Columbia Journal
“Song of My Softening is unapologetic, muscular, and affirming. Startlingly interior, it is a meditation upon and interrogation of the body…”
Julie Marie Wade, Tupelo Quarterly
“Song of My Softening is ultimately a journey toward love... James’s poems are as sharp as the knife, as soft as the pear. I leave this book like the speaker, in paradox: punctured, wounded, but ultimately more whole.”
ABOUT
Omotara James is the author of the poetry collection, Song of My Softening, (Alice James Books, 2024), recommended by NPR, Washington Post Book Club, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Shondaland, BOMB Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Lavender Magazine, Book Riot, Poetry Daily and Ms. Magazine; and reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, the Columbia Journal, The Poetry Question and the Adroit Journal.
James’ poems have been featured in NPR’s Morning Edition, 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 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; and a Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Prize, from Hofstra University. Her poems were shortlisted for the 2019 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. She has received residency fellowships from 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 2024!
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“She’s a great escape artist, and just when you think you know her, she disappears.”
— Lewis Warsh