Dhaka Dust – Bakeless Poetry Prize
“On the surface, Dilruba Ahmed’s poems are rich and variegated. They spin like compass needles crowded around by magnetic fields, and they’d probably seem as exotic to a citizen of Dhaka as they would to a citizen of Duluth. In their depths, though, they seem anything but exotic; they seem to be our own impossible, loving, intimate, bereaved thoughts restored to us transformed and ennobled.”
– Vijay Seshadri, author of The Long Meadow
Press Kit PDF | Graywolf Press
Ranging across Europe and America to the streets of Bangladesh, the sharp-edged poems in Dhaka Dust are culled from a rich mélange of languages, people, and poetic attitudes. Voices of villagers resonate alongside those of global travelers, joining the search for an elusive homeland in small towns and cities alike. Vendors hawk their wares at a bazaar in Dhaka. Gyms in Ohio double as mosques for displaced immigrants. In Ahmed’s skillful hands, these disparate subjects adroitly capture the textures of life in this new century.
