Celebrating the Launch of BESAYDOO

Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Yalie Saweda Kamara celebrated the launch of her award-winning highly acclaimed, debut full-length poetry collection BESAYDOO, at the Contemporary Arts Center, on Friday, January 19.

Kamara read from BESAYDOO and was in conversation with poet, author and professor Ross Gay in front of a standing-room only crowd.

About BESAYDOO

Selected by poet and professor Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo is an elegantly wrought love song to home—as place, as people, as body, and as language.

Of this collection, Johnson states the following:

“Sometimes, neighborhood is nation. And for the diasporic Black body, the City of Oakland is like a Station of the Cross. In Besaydoo, Yalie Saweda Kamara offers a love song dedicated to her hometown, a place shaped by humor, heartbreak, and humiliation. This debut poetry collection stands alone for its scope and aesthetic dexterity. Here, Kamara is radiant, tender, and true.”