Fourth Person Singular

Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017
A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry 2017

Claudia Rankine described the poems in Alsadir's first book as 'lawless, ' 'provocative, and 'heartbreaking' as they 'converse from the inside out... come alive in the back and forth of a mind attempting to understand what it means to be in relation to.' Fourth Person Singular continues to blow open the relationship between self and world in a working through of lyric shame, bending poetic form through fragment, lyric essay, aphorisms mined from the unconscious, and pop-up associations, to explore the complexities, congruities, disturbances - as well as the beauty - involved in self-representation in language. As unexpected as it is bold, Alsadir's ambitious tour de force demands we pay new attention to the current conversation about the nature of lyric - and human relationships - in the 21st century.