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In Long Eye, Kwoya Fagin Maples brings us a sea-bound collection that channels the mythic, defiant voice of a Black Mermaid.
Inspired by Mami Wata, a water spirit of West African folklore, Maples explores the power and divinity of being a Black woman, a mother, a thinker, a protector, and creator. The poems emerge from a neurodivergent mind navigating writing, parenthood, and the Atlantic waters of the South Carolina Lowcountry. The sea and its many creatures serve as guides—for survival, resistance, and transformation.
As she explores the intersection of science, poetry, and mythology, Maples also seeks to depict Black familial bonds in societies structured against them. Woven through the book is the voice of the mermaid, reminding us that “every underwater being exists in relation.”
At turns wonder-struck and irreverent, these poems pulse with human longing. Maples is a poet whose work is both musical and meticulous. Her eye somehow equally trained on the world at large and her own inner workings. The result is an astonishing, immersive experience.
Kwoya Fagin Maples is a poet, woodworker and teacher of creative writing. A Charleston, S.C. native, her creative practice spans both literary and visual arts. She is the author of Mend (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) and co-editor of I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Maples’s debut collection, Mend, received a 2019 Hurston/Wright Legacy Finalist Award for Poetry. Maples is a graduate Cave Canem Fellow. She lives in Birmingham, AL.