The Gathering of Bastards

2024 Nebraska Book Award Winner
2024 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist in Poetry
2024 Midwest Book Award Finalist in Poetry
2023 Julie Suk Award Winner
Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry shortlist

Like I knew, standing
on the seashore, the hunger
wracking a migrant’s body
is movement.
—from Romeo Oriogun’s “Migrant by the Sea”

The Gathering of Bastards chronicles the movement of migrants as they navigate borders both internal and external. At the heart of these poems of vulnerability and sharp intelligence, the poet himself is the perpetual migrant embarked on forced journeys that take him across nations in West and North Africa, through Europe, and through American cities as he navigates the challenges of living through terror and loss and wrestles with the meaning of home.