Polygon signs new poetry collection by Alycia Pirmohamed
Polygon editor Edward Crossan has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Caro Clarke at Portobello Literary for Then the Lake Shifts, a new poetry collection by Alycia Pirmohamed that explores migration, inheritance, spirituality and womanhood.
The award-winning poet’s second collection is described as “both tender and interrogative in its language, and simultaneously hopeful and subversive in its appraisal of climate collapse”.
The publisher goes on: “It navigates themes of inter-generational knowledge, colonial displacement, selfhood, poetic tradition, queer desire and womanhood. In this collection, the forest guide looks just like the self, a brown woman slides across time and space to walk across, and birdsong echoes are affirmations of home and homeland.” Publication is scheduled for May 2027.
Pirmohamed won the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize. She is also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the 2019 CBC Poetry Award, the Gulf Coast Poetry Contest and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award.
She said: “Then the Lake Shifts is a collection that reflects on migration and womanhood. It considers the multiple journeys I have taken over my lifetime, travelling across different thresholds, boundaries and borders, and asks how these crossings change us over time. In these poems, I navigate the processes of artmaking, archiving and recovery; I find solace in figurations of the natural world and in reimagining fragmentary narratives. I’m beyond delighted and excited that this collection will be published by Polygon in the UK and YesYes Books in the US, and I can’t wait to share it with readers.”
Crossan described the collection as “the perfect follow up to [Pirmohamed’s] elegant and extraordinarily beautiful debut, Another Way to Split Water, which was received so warmly by readers and critics… Exploring themes of migration, identity and the natural world, Then the Lake Shifts is both tender and thoughtful. I’m thrilled to be working with Alycia on this collection, and I can’t wait to send it out into the world”.
Clarke added: “I’m thrilled Polygon have acquired Alycia Pirmohamed’s next poetry collection.Their poetry list goes from strength to strength with wide-ranging, astute and thoughtful commissioning and will build on the incredible success of Another Way to Split Water. This new collection goes deeper along the path she has forged with her debut on themes of inheritance, womanhood, climate collapse and migration – it is tender, magical and inventive and I can’t wait for everyone to fall in love with Then the Lake Shifts.”
