Written by Mackenzie Manley, Content Specialist, Downtown Main Library
Just in time to close out National Poetry Month, Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Emerita Yalie Saweda Kamara will discuss her work on Sunday, April 26 from 3:30-5 p.m. The Library’s 2026 Writer in Residence Intisar Khanani will host the discussion.
The event is free and open to the public. The Bookery will be onsite selling books by both Yalie and Intisar. Part of the proceeds will go toward supporting The Library Foundation.
Ahead of the event, Yalie appeared on the Library’s Checked Out podcast to chat about everything from her writing process to recommended reads with host Jessica Rinaudo. Listen to the podcast and read an excerpt from the interview below!
This excerpt has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Jessica: Tell me a little bit about your debut poetry collection, [Besaydoo].
Yalie: The oldest poem in this book, the first draft of it, was in 2011. The book was published in 2024 through [independent publishing house] Milkweed Editions. The book is thinking about different iterations of home. It’s a love letter to Oakland, where I’m from. It’s also heavily informed by the Midwest: Cincinnati and Bloomington, Indiana, where I’ve lived.
It’s thinking a lot about the axis of care and love and joy, and what happens in the absence of those things. It’s thinking about kinship, thinking about blackness, and autobiographical notes...
Jessica: You’re going to be doing an author talk at the Downtown Main Library this weekend. Tell me a little about that.
Yalie: Thinking about the overlaps between myself and Intisar in terms of our writing, our approaches, and inspirations around poetry. Thinking about what poetry means in Cincinnati and beyond, what we can expect from National Poetry Month, and how poetry can be a participatory artform.
Jessica: We’ve talked about the kinds of themes that appear in your work. Are there any others you want to mention that we haven’t talked about already?
Yalie: Other things that show up in the collection, there are topics around mental health and thinking about how that has informed my life and the life of my family. And thinking about the way in which speaking about mental health can be a cultural taboo. How are we moving against that intergenerationally? And thinking about how awareness can afford relief and safety. That’s something that appears closer to the end of my collection, as well as thinking about sobriety. I’m someone who has been sober for about a decade. That’s something I thought was important to mention...
Recommended Reads from Yalie Saweda Kamara
At the end of the podcast, Yalie shared poetry, books, and music she recommends. She recently appeared on a panel at the New Orleans Poetry Festival in which they discussed poet Bob Kaufman, a Black Jewish poet from New Orleans who was a significant figure in the beat poetry movement in the Bay Area.
Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness
Other media she has recently watched include the HBO Max series Rooster and Hacks. Having recently put together a playlist for a friend featuring female hip-hop artists, Yalie shouted out musicians Rapsody, Nadia Rose, Sho Madjozi, Lee Young-Ji, and Noname, whose work is available to stream via Hoopla.
About Yalie Saweda Kamara
Yalie is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, CA. Her debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), was the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and is the winner of the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration (The Hawkins Project, 2022).
Among her honors, Kamara has received fellowships from Academy of American Poets and the National Book Critics Circle and received residencies from the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi, and Smith College. Kamara earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. An assistant professor of English at Xavier University, she teaches courses in global and diasporic literature, creative writing, and hip-hop studies. For more information, please visit her website.
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