Diaspora is witnessing a murder without getting blood on your shirt.

The definition of diaspora is the dispersion of people from their original homeland. But what does it mean to write diaspora poetry? Momtaza Mehri’s debut collection poses this question, taking us from Mogadishu to Naples, Lampedusa to London. Mixing her own family’s experience with the stories of many others across nineteenth- and twentieth-century Somalia, Bad Diaspora Poems confronts the ambivalent nature of speaking for those who have been left behind.

We meet the poet, the translator, the refugee, the exile, and the diaspora kid attempting to transcend their clichéd angst. Told in lyric, prose and text messages, and taking place in living rooms and marketplaces, on buses and balconies, on transatlantic journeys and online, these are essential poems about our diasporic age.

***WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION***

***2024 Somerset Maugham Award Winner***

***A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023***

‘Exceptional . . . Mehri is a truly transnational poet of the twenty-first century.’ Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other

‘A poet like Momtaza Mehri comes only once in a generation. Mehri is a writer of refined insight, audacious imagination and artful technicality — a genius. Bad Diaspora Poems is a feat, its scope of movement both in time and geography is immense, you are swallowed into its voyage. This is an essential collection in the Black diasporic discourse.’ Caleb Femi, author of Poor

‘One of the most unique and striking poetry debuts.’ Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

‘Mehri’s work is not just politically vital but poetically alive.’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year

‘Mehri brings unflinching discursive skills to verse that melds criticism, autobiography and essay while still achieving a crisp sonic momentum characteristic of lyric poetry . . . Mehri is a dazzling voice that refuses to speak from a podium.’ Guardian

‘Rich, playful, often funny. ‘ Sunday Times

‘Momtaza Mehri’s debut collection refuses the presentist and egoist pitfalls of the lyric and avoids the reductive slipstreams and intellectual constraints of identity politics. With her dexterity of tone and breadth of reference, her sense of history and geopolitical scope, Mehri develops a unique new poetic, rich in its connectivity and attentiveness. Bad Diaspora Poems satirical insight and humane outlook are energising, radical and remarkable.’ Jack Underwood, author of Happiness

‘Momtaza Mehri is in the advance party of a daring new turn in global anglophone poetry. Though to say ‘new’ doesn’t do full justice to her innovation; the word implies adherence to tastes or fashion but what we have in Bad Diaspora Poems is something rarer altogether: the poems collected here, being poems with a timeless sense of style, are destined to last even as they speak so incisively to our present moment.’ Kayo Chingonyi, author of Kumukanda

‘Masterful . . . The poems gathered here take nothing for granted. They revel in the slippages of belonging and identity and strive for something greater, something closer to a revolutionary kind of love.’ Victoria Adukwei Bulley, author of Quiet

‘Momtaza Mehri is a groundbreaking new voice. Raw and sophisticated, Bad Diaspora Poems is a gloriously rich mosaic, offering insights into our planet’s increasingly exiled populations, the plight of refugees, and a passionate longing for the homeland.’ Pascale Petit, author of Mama Amazonica