Beyond the Watershed
Format:Paperback
Publisher:CavanKerry Press
Published:25th Apr '25
£15.00
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
A hybrid collection that explores the dual nature of water as both a destructive and healing force, mirroring the experiences of Black women and girls.
A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation, using stunning imagery drawing from the body, spirit, nature, and cityscapes. Alexis traces journeys to break free–documenting pain, making space for light, becoming a reckoning, connecting with spirit, and writing oneself into new seasons of safe waters, healthy love, and transformation. This vital debut affirms that there's "nothing like the thirst / of Black girls who believe in their own dreams," even as they navigate nonlinear paths to healing. "Sometimes the clouds speak to me / & tell me to look beyond the burning," the daughter declares, as she charts her own path forward.
"If you are looking for a love story where the daughter learns through her mother's survival all the ways to eat a mango, cook a meal, bury desire, marry for thunder, or love with noise – these poems are the blueprint for discovery. An assignment in living unabashedly or a lyric for the moved spirit, Nadia Alexis prepares a place at humanity's table for her countrymen with kind hands. A quilt of Haitian language, Kreyol kinship, visual art, and hope, Beyond the Watershed invites every reader to bathe in the brilliance of Black women's burgeoning; Alexis writes us whole within these poetic prayers." -- Mahogany L. Browne, author of Chrome Valley
"Nadia Alexis’s heartrending and heart-mending debut collection, Beyond the Watershed , asks us to bear witness to chilling intimate partner violence, then the poet, like the “wounded rooster [who] sings of morning / like it wants to forget the night,
ISBN: 9781960327093
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 13mm
Weight: 172g
100 pages