Kaveh Akbar Book order (chronological)

Cyrus Shams is lost.The orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus never knew his mother. Killed when her plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, Cyrus has spent his life grappling with the meaningless nature of his mother's death. Now he is set to learn the truth of her life.When Cyrus's obsession with the lives of the martyrs - Bobby Sands, Joan of Arc - leads him to a chance encounter with a dying artist, he finds himself drawn towards the mysteries of his past: an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of Death; and toward his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed.As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize, Kaveh Akbar's second collection embarks on a spiritual journey of disavowal, exploring the presence of divinity amidst the shedding of self and belonging. It grapples with the complexities of recovery from addiction without annihilating the self-as-addict and contemplates the challenges of living justly in a nation that seeks erasure. Akbar poses the poignant question, "what now shall I repair?" and responds with prayer as a form of devotion to dissonance—addressing the void left by a loved one's absence, the discipline of austerity, and the experience of being a Muslim in an Islamophobic society. Richly crafted and generous, the collection's linguistic rigor resonates with the current moment and beyond. As the soul confronts its limits against the backdrop of the American empire and human capacity for both cruelty and grace, these powerful poems inhabit the empty space where song thrives—resonant, revelatory, and sacred. America, I warn you, if you invite me into your home I will linger, kissing my beloveds frankly, pulling up radishes and capping all your pens. There are no good kings, only burning palaces. "Very few living writers write so achingly toward God as Kaveh Akbar... each of the poems in this collection finds its target." - LAUREN GROFF

'A profoundly valuable collection, full of fresh perspective, and opening doors into all kinds of material that has been routinely neglected or patronized' Rowan Williams, TLSThis rich and surprising anthology is a holistic, global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia. Beginning with the earliest attributable author in all of human literature, the twenty-third century BCE Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, and taking in a constellation of voices - from King David to Lao Tzu, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Malian Epic of Sundiata - this selection presents a number of canonical figures like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized, diverse poets going up to the present day. Together they show the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the spiritual, across place and time.

Kaveh Akbars schreibt Lyrik von fast ungebremster emotionaler Wucht. „Ein herausragender Gedichtband, unverkennbar eigen und von größter Schönheit.“ Roxane Gay Das Debüt eines außergewöhnlich kraftvollen Lyrikers: Kaveh Akbars Gedichte sprühen Funken, sie bersten vor Beredsamkeit, Bild- und Ideenreichtum, sprachlicher Musikalität. Wenn Kaveh Akbar über Liebe und Begehren schreibt, über Herkunft und Identität und immer wieder über den qualvollen Kampf mit der eigenen Alkoholsucht, entsteht leidenschaftliche Lyrik von fast ungebremster emotionaler Wucht, gefasst in einer vollkommen eigenen Sprache. Gedichte eines mit sich, Gott und der Welt Ringenden, der die Finsternis kennt und die Schönheit leuchten lässt.

Portrait of the Alcoholic is the first chapbook of poems from Ruth Lilly-winner and founding editor of Divedapper, Kaveh Akbar.

I could not be held responsible for desire he could not be held at all In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, the reality of love can all too often prove disappointing at best, and life-threateningly ineffectual at worst. As Kaveh Akbar puts it in 'Heritage', a poem dedicated to an Iranian woman executed for killing the man who was attempting to rape her: 'in books love can be war-ending/...in life we hold love up to the light/ to marvel at its impotence.' Yet, as it brings us along on its author's struggle with addiction, this darkly sumptuous first collection by an award-winning poet also shows us that there can, after all, be a power and a beauty to our desires, in the strength of their flow, in their achievements and frustrations, and in the pain and joy of denying oneself for one's own sake. These are poems of thirst: for alcohol, for other bodies, and for knowledge. They find the speaker poised between life's clatter and rattle, wanting to retreat yet hungering for more; and, though they rush forward at full tilt through a stream of reflections, memories and emotions, they are never simply indulgent. This refreshingly honest and often breathtaking addition to the canon of addiction literature will carry readers with it just as the poet is carried, and leave behind indelible images of an existence richly felt.