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Vox Humana (Latin for "human voice") is driven by a sense of political urgency to probe the ethics of agency in a world that actively resists the participation of some voices over others.
In and through literary experiments with word and sound, utterance and song,
Vox Humana considers the different ways a body can assert, recount, proclaim, thus underscoring the urgency of doing so against the de-voicing effects of racism and institutional violence.
As the title also represents an organ reed that sounds like the human voice, so DeRango-Adem shares her reclaiming of the instrument traditionally accessed by the white establishment.
These poems are born from the polyphonic phenomenon of the author's multilingual upbringing. They are autobiographical and alchemical, singular and plural, but, above all, a celebration of the (breath) work required for transformation of society and self.
About the author
ADEBE DERANGO-ADEM is a writer and former attendee of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (Naropa University), where she mentored with poets Anne Waldman and Amiri Baraka. She is the author of
Vox Humana, a winner of the 2023 Raymond Souster Award;
Ex Nihilo, a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize;
Terra Incognita, nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award; and
The Unmooring, which had a poem featured in the 2019 Poem-In-Your-Pocket anthology. Adebe served as the 2019-20 Barbara Smith Writer-in-Residence with Twelve Literary Arts and was selected as the winner of the 2021 Boston Review Annual Poetry Contest. She lives in Toronto.
