Song in Tammuz

Winner of the International Berkshire Prize, this collection draws from an incredible range of literary forms, from familiar couplets and tercets to footnotes, dictionary definitions, and luminous lyric fragments. While stylistically daring, even virtuosic, Avia Tadmor’s stunning debut is unified by its enduring engagement with questions of language and alterity. What does it mean to be othered by and through language? What happens when grammar, syntax, and the concepts of identity housed within them are at odds? Does a revolutionary message demand new forms of discourse? “I can say it through the distance of this other tongue,” Tadmor writes. Indeed, she considers the role of language—from conceptual framework to vast storehouse of history, culture, and inheritance—in shaping the self, ultimately revealing our agency within a grammar and syntax we did not choose. As Tadmor writes, “Her pen is a stronghold, a lighthouse / flickering late in July.”