Quiet: Poems - Victoria Adukwei Bulley

A black British poet making her thrilling American debut explores the importance of "quiet" in producing forms of community, resistance, and love.

How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn't silence? Where does quiet exist--and what liberating potential might it hold? These poems dwell on ideas of black interiority, intimacy, and selfhood, and they celebrate as fiercely as they mourn. With a metaphysical edge and a formal restlessness attuned to both the sonics and the inadequacies of language, Quiet navigates the tension between the impulse to guard one's inner life and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, "your silence will not protect you."