Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia
PBS Winter Recommendation 2021
Winner of the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Poetry Collection at the Forward Prizes 2022
Amnion is a contemporary lyric epic, journeying from the Philippines to Libya, through France, Spain, and the UK. This debut collection of poems questions keenly and urgently the roots of migration and colonialism, charting what it means to grow up in a family divided by geography, history and language.
Managing the consequences of empire, familial discord, personal mythologies and contemporary issues of class and race, these narratives of history, both personal and public, are disseminated through Stephanie's patient and ever-expanding rhetoric. Lyrically charged, this book-length poem weaves memoir, essay and poetics with the eye of an archivist. Throughout, the lyric 'I' is questioned through the very fragments that come to represent it.
Amnion feeds into the history of Homeric, epic verse with ambitious scope, grace and erudition, promising to be one of the most significant texts on contemporary personhood.
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