This dazzling debut announces a not-so-new voice: that of the spoken-word poet Tjawangwa Dema. Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Dema's collection, The Careless Seamstress, evokes the national and the subjective while reemphasizing that what is personal is always political.
Tjawangwa Dema is a poet from Botswana, an arts administrator, and a teaching artist in Bristol, England. Her chapbook, Mandible, was published in the box¿set Seven New Generation African Poets, and her poems have appeared in the New Orleans Review, the Cordite Review, and the Rio Grande Review.