Besaydoo: Poems Tableware-Napkins "The creatures try to accessorise

"The creatures try to accessorise in a way that shows how many pennies they have in their purse

their feline companions lead them toward healing

and helpful tips

In this deck

Besaydoo: Poems Tableware-Napkins "The creatures try to accessoriseSelected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara's Besaydoo is an elegantly wrought love song to home as place, as people, as body, and as language. A griot is a historian, a living repository of communal legacies with "a story pulsing in every blood cell." In Besaydoo, Kamara serves as griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl straddling womanhood, the woman re discovering